Kestrell

Actually, if this app was accessible, I would consider getting one of these
https://www.cnet.com/tech/we-found-the-most-adorable-new-gizmo-of-ces-2023/

Kes: If anyone wants to know how to run an accessible virtual conference, you should follow this conference, beginning from their pre-registration phase because, as far as accessibility and assistive tech is concerned, this is the most impressive virtual conference going. I’ve attended both of the previous virtual conferences, and I’m always excited to find out who they line up as
Speakers
https://sighttechglobal.com/speakers/
and what the panels are, because they definitely follow through on discussing cutting edge topics in assistive tech. Their main page also has the following statement:
"Nothing about us without us
All sessions will include the guidance and participation by people who are blind or visually impaired."

From the announcement email:

It's time to register for the third annual Sight Tech Global conference, which takes place entirely online in a highly accessible format on
December 7 and 8.
Click here to register
https://sighttechglobal.com/conference-registration/

From Amazon to Verizon, most of the major tech and media companies are included here.
https://ophthalmicedge.org/patient/accessibility-support-phone-lines-you-should-know/

This and the URL for the preceding post were taken from this week's Top Tech Tidbits: to read this week's newsletter in its entirety, or to subscribe, go to
https://www.toptechtidbits.com/tidbits2022/09152022/

Kes: I totally fangirl for Hugh Herr and, if you are interested in prosthetics, I encourage you to go read the rest of this article, and then go read more about Hugh Herr's work.

excerpt

Interdisciplinary research center funded by philanthropist Lisa Yang aims to mitigate disability through technologies that marry human physiology with electromechanics.
September 23, 2021
https://news.mit.edu/2021/new-bionics-center-established-mit-24-million-gift-0923

With the establishment of the new K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics, MIT is pushing forward the development and deployment of enabling technologies that communicate directly with the nervous system to mitigate a broad range of disabilities. The center’s scientists, clinicians, and engineers will work together to create, test, and disseminate bionic technologies that integrate with both the body and mind.

The center is funded by a $24 million gift to MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research from philanthropist Lisa Yang, a former investment banker committed to advocacy for individuals with visible and invisible disabilities. Her previous gifts to MIT have also enabled the establishment of the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Center for Molecular Therapeutics in Neuroscience, Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research, Y. Eva Tan Professorship in Neurotechnology, and the endowed K. Lisa Yang Post-Baccalaureate Program.

....To develop prosthetic limbs that move as the brain commands or optical devices that bypass an injured spinal cord to stimulate muscles, bionic developers must integrate knowledge from a diverse array of fields — from robotics and artificial intelligence to surgery, biomechanics, and design. The K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics will be deeply interdisciplinary, uniting experts from three MIT schools: Science, Engineering, and Architecture and Planning. With clinical and surgical collaborators at Harvard Medical School, the center will ensure that research advances are tested rapidly and reach people in need, including those in traditionally underserved communities.

To support ongoing efforts to move toward a future without disability, the center will also provide four endowed fellowships for MIT graduate students working in bionics or other research areas focused on improving the lives of individuals who experience disability.

The center will be led by Hugh Herr,
https://www.media.mit.edu/people/hherr/overview/
a professor of media arts and sciences at MIT’s Media Lab, and
Ed Boyden,
https://mcgovern.mit.edu/profile/ed-boyden/
the Y. Eva Tan Professor of Neurotechnology at MIT, a professor of biological engineering, brain and cognitive sciences, and media arts and sciences, and an investigator at MIT’s McGovern Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
A double amputee himself, Herr is a pioneer in the development of bionic limbs to improve mobility for those with physical disabilities.“The world profoundly needs relief from the disabilities imposed by today’s nonexistent or broken technologies. We must continually strive towards a technological future in which disability is no longer a common life experience,” says Herr. “I am thrilled that the Yang Center for Bionics will help to measurably improve the human experience for so many.”
Boyden, who is a renowned creator of tools to analyze and control the brain, will play a key role in merging bionics technologies with the nervous system. “The Yang Center for Bionics will be a research center unlike any other in the world,” he says. “A deep understanding of complex biological systems, coupled with rapid advances in human-machine bionic interfaces, mean we will soon have the capability to offer entirely new strategies for individuals who experience disability. It is an honor to be part of the center’s founding team.”

Kes: I actually don't listen to my screen reader nearly this fast--my usual speed is only somewhat faster than an average speaker, I would call it highly caffeinated geek speed--and, while I have issues listening to older lesser quality TTS, II don't aspire to the higher quality, human-sounding TTS for most purposes: most of the time, the TTS is rendered kind of invisibl inside my head, equivalent to my internal reading voice.
https://tink.uk/notes-on-synthetic-speech/#main-content

Kes: Ray-Ban has also worked with Bose to develop my beloved bluetooth audio sunglasses
https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/frames.html
which have an amazing audio quality, and are great for visually impaired people who want to listen to navigation apps on their phone without losing the ability to hear what's going on around them.
I can see these Facebook glasses--note that you don't need to necessarily upload your photos to Facebook--as being useful to some low vision users who may wish to take photos of objects or environments in order to examine them in more detail or run them through an visual recognition app.

Facebook’s New Camera Glasses Are Dangerously Easy to Use
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-ray-ban-stories-camera-glasses/

Facebook’s latest foray into “Wait, haven’t I seen this before?” is a pair of photo- and video-capturing sunglasses, à la
Snap Spectacles.
https://www.wired.com/story/snapchat-spectacles-2018/
They’re called Ray-Ban Stories, with Ray-Ban appearing first and Facebook second in most of the product branding. Even though this is a product collaboration between two globally recognizable brands, these are Facebook glasses. This is Facebook’s first piece of wearable tech designed for casual use—not just specialized VR applications, which is what
Oculus
https://www.wired.com/story/oculus-rift-five-year-anniversary/
is for—and the sunglasses are designed for completely frictionless media capture of the world around you. They go on sale today for $299.

It’s the “effortless” part that will raise eyebrows behind the plastic frames. Facebook has made a pair of smart glasses—even if they’re not true AR glasses—that people might actually want to wear. (Giaia Rener, Ray-Ban's global brand director, even describes them as "the first smart glasses you're going to want to wear.") If the ultimate goal of wearable-tech makers has been to develop something at the intersection of comfort, invisibility, and invisible data capture, then Facebook seems to have accomplished this.

Cameras are everywhere now; a person doesn’t even need to pull out their phone to digitally memorialize a moment. The question is whether Facebook should own even more of those moments.

Where Snap’s design team has leaned into the
Burning Man aesthetic
https://www.wired.com/story/snap-spectacles-3-glasses/
for its Spectacles, Facebook and Ray-Ban went normcore. If you ignore the fact that they have cameras and wireless connectivity, Ray-Ban Stories are just
are just a pair of Wayfarers.
....Most smart glasses have unusually large temples to accommodate all the necessary sensors and chips and batteries. The arms on the Ray-Ban Stories glasses are slightly wider than a normal pair, but they don’t look geeky. (They also don’t have a waveguide, or a microprojector for display optics, since they’re not powering AR overlays). Packed into the arms are a power button, a capture button, a three-microphone array, two tiny speakers, and a touch panel. On the front of the specs are two 5-megapixel cameras, as well as a barely-there LED indicator light that lets people know the wearer is recording.

Capturing media is easy. You long-press the button to take a photo, and a shutter sound comes through the built-in speakers to indicate a photo has in fact been snapped. Press quickly on the same button and the glasses start recording a 30-second video. You can also walk around saying “Hey, Facebook” and speaking your capture commands if you have no shame whatsoever. The videos are crisp and stable (even if they're square); the photos, which are only captured after a maddening half-second shutter lag, measure 2,592 by 1,944 pixels, with plenty of room for editing. All images and clips export into Facebook's View app using the glasses themselves as a temporary Wi-Fi hot spot for faster sharing. At this point, you can edit and share photos and videos directly to Facebook or Instagram, or usher them out of the walled garden by adding them to your photo roll.
Read the full review at
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-ray-ban-stories-camera-glasses/

Were you wondering if there was a name for those yellow textured tiles that line the edges of train platforms and other locations to make spaces safer for visually impaired people? They're called tenji blocks and they were invented in Japan about fifty years ago.
https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3147018/recognise-these-japans-pavement-tenji-blocks-guide-visually

I've probably posted this before, but I'm sure many people would benefit from having Alexa speaking slower, or just have fun changing her accent, and you may know non-English speakers with disabilities who would benefit from an Alexa
https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-change-alexa-voice/

I bought a Tenikle a few months ago: it's a sort of silicone bendable tripod with suction cups all over it, so you can arrange your devices in different positions and/or configurations. I'm wondering if it would be especially useful for wheelchair users.

https://tenikle.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwgtWDBhDZARIsADEKwgPNiNREQiD5yjwNGQJTLLNRONQ_X8KCeMUl-csjTGhzI5SXe93WBZUaAlGeEALw_wcB

February is Low Vision Month, and AccessWorld, a publication of the American Foundation of the Blind (AFB), has an article featuring resources for people who are adjusting to vision loss.
https://www.afb.org/aw/22/2/17391

This is a great, basic emergency kit-type article. If you're working in health care, but visual impairment isn't your speciality, keep this link as a resource, along with your state's equivalent of the next one.

In Massachusetts, any person, adult or child, who wishes to request services, needs to register with the
Massachusetts Commission for the Blind (MCB)
https://www.mass.gov/orgs/massachusetts-commission-for-the-blind#main-content

Since the pandemic, MCB has set up
The Virtual Blindness Registry
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/mcb-virtual-blindness-registry
which is available via Zoom or phone Monday thru Friday from 10 am to 1 pm ET.

Important: Your ophthalmologist or optician is supposed to inform you when your visual acuity has reached low vision or legally blind, and when you have become eligible for low vision services
**but many do not know or do not care**
so individuals need to be proactive about being knowledgeable and seeking services if they feel they are needed and would make life easier. Please do not underestimate how much easier learning to adapt to low vision can make your life, or how connecting with other people who share the same experiences can make what seemed a depressing weight something you can deal with and even joke about.

You're never too old to learn new things and find new friends.

from
Check eligibility requirements
https://www.mass.gov/how-to/check-eligibility-requirements-for-mcb-services

block quote start

Definition of “Legally Blind”
Vision with correction of 20/200 or less in the better eye; or
Peripheral field of ten degrees (10º) or less, regardless of visual acuity.

*Legal Blindness does not mean total blind.

The Massachusetts Commission for the Blind (MCB) oversees the registration process for the reporting of legal blindness. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 6, Section 136 requires that all eye care providers report within 30 days all cases of legal blindness to the MCB.

block quote end
Kes: Right. The ophthalmologist I had from the time I was 3 until I was 20 never told me I was legally blind, even though I had been blind in one eye the entire time, and read with the book touching my nose, and neither did my family. I fell down a lot of stairs, got a couple of concussions, flunked a lot of math classes, and I just want to say, no one needs to go through that kind of shit.

Go discover the secret language of braille. Find your inner geek with smartphone apps or a computer. Go listen to interviews with blind photographers or podcasters.
.

In my opinion, being low vision is way harder than being blind but, in part, that's because most people can't understand what low vision is and it's hard to explain. But if you are just beginning to need to deal with this, or you know someone who is dealing with it, I encourage you to connect with these services and technologies: these things do make life easier.