On FSCast episode 258, we catch up with Ryan Jones at Sight City in Frankfurt to find out some of what's new with Vispero products.
At the Optelec stand, Rene Ludwig shows us a talking kiosk running JAWS.
And on a visit with Nolan Crabb, we discuss, among other things, when to fight and when to build bridges.
OLEG SHEVKUN:
Hello, and welcome to FSCast for May 2025. I'm Oleg Shevkun, and I'm in a pretty special place right now. I'm at Kap Europa, which is one of the largest convention centers here in Frankfurt, Germany. It's a four-level building, which is hosting right now Sight City 2025, the largest European exhibition of blindness related assistive technology. A number of companies are represented here, and one of the companies is, of course, Vispero, with Optelec, and a whole network of dealers. And there's a good reason why I'm here.
In May, we released an update to JAWS, ZoomText, and Fusion. There are a number of enhancements, and you can read about them on freedomscientific.com. For example, with JAWS, we have now much improved math support, especially math support in Braille. We have some new possibilities for number reading, which are especially important for languages other than English. And in our EAP section, we now have the new graphics labeler, which allows you to quickly label any graphic that you come across on the web. This feature is currently in development, but we encourage you to try it and let us know what you think. You can read more about this, again, on freedomscientific.com. All the update documentation is there, and you can download all of our updates quite easily.
But there is another reason why I really wanted to catch up with Ryan, and let's see if we can do this.
Here at Sight City in Frankfurt, I'm catching up with Ryan Jones, Vispero's vice president for software and product management. Ryan, hello, and good to see you.
RYAN JONES:
Hey, Oleg, it's good to see you in person. We talk on Teams and email all the time, and it's always great to see people in person. And especially our European colleagues that we don't get to see from the US all the time.
OLEG:
You've been in those European trade shows a number of times. How different is that from what happens with the trade shows in the US?
RYAN:
Interestingly, it's not that much different, other than there's a lot of other languages spoken. It's still the same. Many of the same vendors come to the European accessibility conferences. You have a combination of sessions where people are talking about different technologies or use cases, and then you of course have the exhibit area. I often come to this show because it's a great place to meet with some of our dealers. It's really not that much different from something like CSUN in the US, it's just a different audience. Certainly, much more international over here in Europe.
OLEG:
And let me remind you all that our products are being translated and are being sold in a variety of languages. I'm not sure right now, but it's perhaps around 30 languages. Ryan, do you know the specifics?
RYAN:
I don't know the number, but that sounds about right. It's many. Dozens.
OLEG:
FS products are being used around the world. And talking of FS products, we've just released our May updates. And one of the statements in those update notes has to do with licensing changes.
RYAN:
In May we have introduced some new license types. And many people are familiar with the perpetual license model that we've always had. But the truth is, the modern software world that we live in is moving to a subscription base. When you look at products like Microsoft Office products, Adobe products, any other mainstream software company offers a subscription now. Where you're always getting the updates, you're always getting bug fixes, and so on. We are starting to offer subscriptions for our professional and our home user licenses that in the past were only perpetual licenses. And those are available and will be coming available over the next couple of months, both in the US through dealers and directly from us, and also internationally through our dealer network.
Now, as part of that, for those in the US and Canada, we have what's been called the home annual program. And this was a subscription license. This has been around for several years. Where if you were using JAWS, ZoomText, or Fusion for home personal use, non-commercial use. Meaning, I'm using it for my own use, not for my work, not for my job or my school, but just for my own use to browse the internet, do whatever it is that I do on the computer. You could sign up for the home annual program and get JAWS or ZoomText or Fusion at a lower subscription cost.
That program is still available. However, one change that's happened right now is we don't have that on the website right now, as we're working through a variety of things and launching these new products and getting everything straightened out. The home annual program, you cannot sign up for it new on the website if you're eligible. If you are already signed up in the home annual, meaning you already have an active subscription in the US or Canada, nothing is changing. There's nothing going to change there, it'll still auto-renew as it's been. And if you are eligible for the home annual program or want to find out if you're eligible, then we ask you to call our customer service department in the US. And you can reach them at (1-800) 444-4443. And if you reach out to our customer service team and discuss your situation, and if you're eligible for the home annual program, meaning you're paying out of pocket yourself and you're using JAWS, ZoomText, or Fusion for non-commercial use, then they can get you signed up for the program.
It is still available, I want to make sure that's very clear. Some of the things that we hear online say the home annual program's not available anymore, that we've shut it down. Those are not true. It is still available. And again, for anyone who already is in the program, nothing's changing with that. For anyone who wants to sign up for it and is looking to get into that program, we just ask that you call our team, whereas it's not available on the website at this time.
OLEG:
Then the home subscription license that's offered through the website, who is the intended audience for that one?
RYAN:
It's the same as the intended audience for our traditional home perpetual license, and that is for rehabilitation agencies who are buying licenses for clients. It's for nonprofits who may be buying licenses for clients. Internationally, it's used by insurance agencies and certain governments that pay for home use licenses for clients. It's used internationally for people who are paying themselves out of pocket in those other countries. There's a variety of uses. Basically, the way to think of it is, if you were typically using the home perpetual license, then the home subscription license is the same use case. It's just a subscription option versus buying the perpetual license up front, and then paying for the maintenance agreements as you go over time.
OLEG:
When you're looking ahead into 2025, how are you feeling about where we're going with our products?
RYAN:
I'm feeling really good. There's some great things that we've got on the roadmap with AI, some experiments that we're running right now the way that AI can help us in, again, traditional areas that we've struggled in for screen reading. AI helped us a lot to be able to produce picture smart AI, which is breaking down the barrier of accessing graphical information or pictures, images. Whether it's on the web or in documents, or whatever. We've got similar things in the works for some other traditional barriers that we've all faced with screen reading. There's some really cool stuff coming. I can't share too much about it, but as we get over the next couple months, I think we'll be able to start giving some sneak previews of what's coming over the next six to 12 months, which will be really fun.
OLEG:
I'm sitting here actually on the edge wanting to tell more, but I can't, just as Ryan cannot. And instead we're going to go into our virtual studio and I'm going to introduce you to somebody whom we've had a privilege of talking to in the last week. And Ryan, thanks for being with us on FSCast.
RYAN:
Thank you Oleg, and it's great to see you in person this week.
OLEG:
I told you we'll be going into our studio, but I think we'll be doing that in a couple of minutes. I was walking around the exhibition here around Sight City, and I'm at the Optelec booth. And here I see a talking kiosk. And not just a talking kiosk, but a kiosk with JAWS on this. And to find out more, we're here joined by Rene Ludwig.
RENE LUDWIG:
Yeah. Hello.
OLEG:
Hello. Welcome to FSCast.
RENE:
Yeah, nice having me.
OLEG:
What do we have here?
RENE:
Yeah, this is an example of a JAWS kiosk, how it could work. And we created a Vispero medical center for today where you can check in and select your doctor where you have an appointment.
OLEG:
If you're in a large clinic with many doctors, and those self-check-in centers. Okay.
RENE:
Yes. It looks like an ATM. It's a big device with a touchscreen. And on the left side we have connected a keyboard with arrow keys and some other keys, for example, to change the speech rate and the volume. And you have a headphone jack where you can plug in your headphones, and then a JAWS kiosk will launch and it will speak to you. And if I press button.
KIOSK:
Welcome to the Vispero Medical Center. Press the right arrow key to move to the next item. Press the down arrow key to move to the next section.
RENE:
I can press right arrow.
KIOSK:
Please check-in for your appointment. Press the right arrow key to move to the next check-in. Your ticket number is 479.
RENE:
It tells me my ticket number.
KIOSK:
Continue to select your doctor.
RENE:
And I press the middle key, which is like enter.
Kiosk:
Select the doctor you will be seeing today. Dr. James Smith, general medicine. Dr. Susan Jones, cardiology. Dr. Sam Tables, respiratory. Press the middle key to activate.
RENE:
I just arrowed right. The right arrow is the most used key here. And of course left arrow would bring you back to the previous entry.
KIOSK:
Dr. Susan Jones, cardiology. Press the middle key to activate.
RENE:
And the middle key will activate and bring you to the next screen.
KIOSK:
Confirm your appointment at 3:45 PM today with Dr. Susan Jones. Press the right arrow key.
RENE:
And it will of course repeat the time and the name of the doctor.
KIOSK:
Confirm your appointment, press the middle key.
RENE:
And now confirm.
KIOSK:
Thank you for checking-in for your appointment. Press the right arrow key to move to the next-
RENE:
And then it'll tell me where I have to go.
KIOSK:
Please proceed to the elevator to floor four, suite 410, and wait for your name to be called.
RENE:
And if I want to, I could start over and select a different doctor, and can start again. And this is just an example, you can have such machines everywhere, McDonald's or bank machines, or self-service in a supermarket. And we can use JAWS kiosk to make them accessible.
OLEG:
Many of the McDonald's restaurants in the States, they do have this already. And it's coming to other stores, to other companies as well, I understand. There's development going on it right now with more and more availability, is that correct?
RENE:
Yeah. And Europe, now in more and more countries, the European Accessibility Act comes into place. And so, it's interesting also for German companies and for companies in France and Italy maybe. And they can use JAWS kiosk to make their machines accessible for us. It's really, really great solution.
OLEG:
I'm going to open up a secret, or sort of a secret. We are working on an FSCast episode all about payment terminals, kiosks, and all those things becoming accessible with JAWS. And so stay tuned in for that. It's not this month, but hopefully in a couple of months we'll be able to tell you more. And for now, Rene, thank you for sharing with us what you have here at the kiosk.
RENE:
You're welcome.
OLEG:
We're back to our recording studio, and I'm really honored to welcome Nolan Crabb to FSCast. It's that feeling when you talk personally to somebody whose name you've seen since you were a teenager. Nolan was the editor of Dialogue Magazine in the 80s, and then the editor of the Braille Forum from ACB in the 90s and early 2000s. Now, for the last 18 years, Nolan Crabb has been serving as assistive technology director at Ohio State University. Nolan, welcome to FSCast.
NOLAN CRABB:
I'm so honored to be with you. It's a pleasure to be here. And you're right, I did all of those things and loved it, for the most part. Those were good years, all of them.
OLEG:
Now, Nolan, your passion for technology, where does that come from? Does that come with the genes?
NOLAN:
I don't know where it comes from. It's fascinating to me as well. It resulted in a career change and all kinds of things over the years. I grew up with remarkable parents. And as a young teenager, mid-70s, I would go to them, and I'm this uptight kid. And I would say, "What am I going to do with my life? I'm never going to be able to find a job. This is going to be a horrible," blah blah, blah. And I would just give them this litany of dark potential experiences that I was quite sure were in my future.
And they didn't have all the answers either, but they were remarkable people in that they exuded a quiet confidence that said, "We're not sure what exactly the roadmap looks like, but we believe it's going to be okay." Well, when you're 15 and 16 and these people have been trustworthy throughout your life, and they haven't messed with your head. They were just that kind of good people. You could step away from that and say, okay, you know what, maybe it's not going to be as dark as all that.
And because of technology, as it turned out, they were absolutely correct. And when I graduated from high school, I knew that I wanted to attend Brigham Young University. Not only was it a great school, but it was the only school at that time in the state of Utah that had an electronic editing system for its student newspaper. You didn't have to be much of a prognosticator to see that electronic editing systems were where the industry was going. I had known since the age of nine that I was going to be a reporter somewhere, or do something along those lines. Other kids had football heroes and mine was Walter Cronkite. Well, I knew I wasn't going to make it on TV. But I knew that I could write, and so I had wanted to do the work in journalism for a lot of years, even as a really young person.
Miracle to miracles, BYU accepted me, and I began learning that electronic newspaper editing system that they had for their paper. It was like a word processor. And you had a subject field where you would put in what they called a slug. And a slug is a two or three word descriptor of your story. And then, of course, they would write the headlines later. Your story would get sent over to the copy desk and those guys would craft the headline for it, et cetera. So you didn't have to do all that.
Yeah, you had to know which field you were in, or at least hope you knew, and guess at it. And sometimes, most of the time, I got it right. Because it would default to the slug field or the subject field, whatever. And then, you really could still use a keyboard and press tab or something to get into the actual editing portion of the software, but there were some really esoteric funky commands you had to memorize in order to save it to the correct folders. And those seemed to go on forever. Today, I would be just horrified at the thought of having to memorize that kind of a command structure.
OLEG:
But Nolan, what's worse is you never knew whether the command was correctly executed.
NOLAN:
You are absolutely correct. And it's like the good old days of typing something only to realize you had bumped the control on your typewriter and it was in stencil mode instead of regular ribbon mode, and all you had were these impressions on the page. Yeah, it took a lot of trust. And I will tell you that I had a lot of magnificent young people who would sit next to me while they were crafting their own story. And I would say, "I know you're on deadline, but do you have three seconds you can just glance at this screen and tell me whether you think it looks okay to go ahead and save it?" "Yeah, that's fine. Go ahead. You're fine." And you could save it and it worked.
Not a great system. The IT guy at the student paper and I used to sit up long into the night and talk about potential. He had found Maryland Computer Services, and he wondered if that would be a possibility for us. And about the same time I discovered an Optacon. I knew about its existence. But a long-time lifelong friend of mine, JR Westmoreland, had several, and he was also in the computer industry. I knew that they existed, and I finally got to use one at that newspaper.
OLEG:
Well, excuse my ignorance. I thought the Optacon was designed for working with papers, and now you're telling me you were using it as a screen reader. How would that work with a computer?
NOLAN:
I did, sir. It had a lens that could clip to the retina, which enabled me to run that lens. And it was the shape of a little gun, or something funny. I can't describe it real well. It enabled me to run that lens across the screen just as I would run the regular camera across the document, and be able to see the content of the screen that way.
OLEG:
Sometimes we think of those years as the dark ages. You had to have readers, you had to have assistants and all that. But at the same time it was probably a nice path towards developing people skills. Was that rather dark times or was that a learning experience?
NOLAN:
No, it was a glorious learning experience. Not only was I using whatever "primitive technology" may have existed at the time, but you're correct, I learned rapidly how to build bridges to others. And although today I'm quite an introvert, and rather extremely reclusive in some respects, the ability to do that still remains. And you never lose that. That's a huge blessing.
While I was at BYU, Ray Kurzweil had invented his reading machine back in the mid-70s. And he generously installed those at a variety of universities around the country. And for whatever reason, BYU was one of those chosen to get one of his original reading machines. And these things were behemoths. They were cobbled together by a cable, and there were two units. That was my first introduction to synthetic speech, and it opened doors. It was just pure magic.
Here I am with this print book on that screen, on that glass. And all of a sudden this voice, admittedly somewhat free of emotion and inflection, is reading what it was finding on that page. And the accuracy wasn't super great, but nor was it absolutely abominable. And that was the beginning for me. That opened the door and said, "Hey, I wonder what else is possible."
OLEG:
And the speech, was that, like, DeckTalk?
NOLAN:
Yes, it was.
OLEG:
Is it true that if you got your page upside down, it would not turn it automatically?
NOLAN:
You got gibberish. And so that's how you knew, whoops, I better flip this and try it again. And it was not a rapid scan like what we are used to today with our various apps that do that sort of thing. And if it was a complex page, it would take a minute or more or longer to do that scan.
OLEG:
Could you then save the results?
NOLAN:
To the best of my memory, no, not in that original machine. You could listen. And I used to take cassette recorders in there and I would actually record onto cassettes those results if I wanted to, or needed to.
OLEG:
When did you get to use computers in the full sense of the word? Was that an Apple II? Or how did that work out?
NOLAN:
After I left the newspaper in Utah and became the editor at Dialogue when it was headquartered in Illinois, our sighted staff used lots of typewriters until we introduced the Commodore 64, believe it or not, into that ecosystem. And we met a ham radio guy in Chicago, a young man who is both a computer nerd and a ham guy. And he had developed a talking program for the Commodore 64, believe it or not. And he brought that in, installed it, and I was able to sort of use that silly little Commodore device to do some editing with. It was pretty primitive stuff, but it was laudable in its day, and I certainly was appreciative of his efforts to make that thing work. For what it was, it was pretty impressive. After I left that assignment, I finally got something called a Leading Edge Model D, and this was a Korean-made computer with two floppy drives. And I was right uptown, boy, oh golly. I thought I was really somebody special because I had this snazzy thing with 640K of memory. I used a program in those days called the Enhanced PC Talking Program. It was developed by a guy named Ron Hutchinson, who lived here in Columbus, Ohio. And I believe had been a programmer for Nationwide, the insurance company. And he developed this program for use with the DOS operating system. And it was decent. I got along with it pretty well and it worked fairly well. And eventually, in the early 90s, of course I became intimately familiar with the Braille ‘n Speak and the Type ‘n Speak, because those were magnificent pieces of equipment.
Concurrently, I began using a little product called Window-Eyes. And my journey to Vispero is a little unorthodox in that I came here from the competitor. And loved that program, thought there would be nothing ever better. And when it folded, when Window-Eyes was incorporated into what is today Vispero, I thought, oh gosh, I don't know what I'm going to do. I knew that JAWS existed, but in my head, surely it was primitive or less capable, less efficient, less blah, blah, blah. You fill in the blank. I was this ardent hardcore Window-Eyes person.
And my old friend JR kept saying, "No, JAWS is a good program. I've done the beta list for years." And he was familiar with it. He said, "You've got to stay with it, and you're going to find that it really is going to help you. And it's going to be a wonderful experience." He was right. And I can't speak for the university for whom I work, we don't endorse any particular screen reader. On a personal level, however, I will tell you that I have become as ardent an evangelist for JAWS features and the productivity it offers as I ever was for the other program in years past. I never thought I would get there, but I absolutely am.
Quick example, things like sound schemes, what a glorious experience those are to use. And I think they're so underrated. Most people don't bother with them, in fact. And my gosh, they're wonderful. I've got sound schemes created here that some of the linguists on my campus would probably love to take a look at. These things beep and whistle and click and pop for a whole variety of various reasons, but I've come to know what they are. And so I don't have to listen to "heading level three", blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think these are actual productivity gains. I think you could measure them. I don't know how I would do it, but I'm really convinced you could. That's just one tiny example of how I've benefited from Vispero.
I think your training department, those people are miracle workers on a constant basis. I watch them train and they do as well at teaching off-script by example as they do at teaching on-script. I've watched a computer go completely haywire, and Elizabeth is just unflappable. She's just very calm. "Oh, well it worked 20 minutes ago. Let's move on to this next step." And I'm the guy out there going, "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe this happened to me." "Okay, don't do the meltdown, Nolan. It's okay." And she's out there teaching by example. "Well, if your machine goes haywire, goes crazy, you just press onto the next thing." And I really appreciate the work all of that Training Department does. I don't want to leave anyone out. I certainly don't want to exclude Rachel and Ron Miller and all of the others.
OLEG:
We are thinking of technology sometimes in terms of bits and bytes, but do you think there is a relationship—and I'm pretty sure you do, because you alluded to that already—a relationship between learning to use technology and being efficient with technology and building your character.
NOLAN:
Oh, absolutely. I emphatically believe that assistive technology has to teach character. You may not remember, but back in the 80s we were all working with internal speech synthesizer cards. Things like the Votalker, which is what I had and used. And there were others. But my goodness, in order to get that thing to work, you had to get in there and literally physically change jumpers, little wires between dip switches, or between connectors. And you had to set dip switches sometimes to get the right com ports. We were forced, as blind and visually impaired users of this stuff, to get into the grit and the grime of it far more than most sighted users ever had to do. They learned to be button pushers and we learned to be detectives. And we learned to say, "Hm, that didn't work. Let me go back and redo this. Maybe I've got that jumper incorrect, or that dip switch." We had to learn the real ridiculous part of this stuff. And I think you're right, I think it taught character. I think it taught me that I love the idea of being an armchair detective and running down these problems. Because you're never going to get shot at if you're an armchair assistive technology detective, it's just not in the cards. But you are going to have to experience all kinds of experiences where you're solving puzzles. And you're literally using good logic and reasoning, and that translates to, or it ought to, to teaching others how to use this stuff. If that person, that staff member on my campus is struggling with a concept, it's not her who's having the problem, it's her instructor. And that's me.
And I'm always backing up and rethinking and refining and trying to... "Well, we didn't understand the concept last week when we taught it that way. Is there a better way to reintroduce this concept and teach it?" Yeah, I do think it builds character. I think it teaches patience. It teaches a kind of perseverance, if you will. And has made a real positive difference for me. It even factors a bit into how I raised my daughters. I was able to do some of the same things. Well, they don't operate based on dip switches and jumpers, of course, but they have such unique personalities. And you find, therefore, unique solutions to whatever problem confronts you in the moment that coincides with that individual's personality. And I don't know that I was ever a great father. I'd like to hope I was kind of sort of occasionally successful. But they've all turned out really well and they're remarkable people. And I think, believe it or not, indirectly at least, the assistive technology and our ability to really have to get into the grit probably helped even in parenthood at some level.
OLEG:
In your work for the university, how often do you actually interact with blind or visually impaired students?
NOLAN:
My job is a unique one in that it doesn't work at all with students. They have a student disability services group who handles all of those issues. My work is strictly faculty and staff, and I love that. I really do. First of all, these are remarkable people to work with. And I am fortunate, I have a supervisor who's one of the most enlightened people I've ever known on earth. You can have the most casual conversation with him and come away somehow better off, even though it was a seemingly mundane casual conversation. That's the kind of individual he is. And it's wonderful to work with these faculty and staff folks who suddenly deal with a disability. They'll call up here and, "What am I going to do? I've been diagnosed with macular degeneration, I'm too young to stop teaching."
And we're able to just talk and get them to step back from the edge. The cliff, if you will. And I don't have any psychology degrees or any of that counseling stuff, probably would be better served... Or, they would be better served if I did, I guess. But we just sit and talk things through. And I try to go back to that same technique by parents who used when I was younger. Not sure exactly all the answers, we'll dig around and we'll find them. But in the meantime, you have to assume that things are going to be not as horrible as they initially look. And that's sort of where... That seems to work.
And in the meantime, they share with you their lives and the remarkable nature of their experiences. And you benefit tremendously from having gotten to know those people. And it's, believe it or not, one of the biggest areas of service that I deal with right now is disability that involves hand or arm use. We don't have as many blind or low vision faculty as we do people who, "I really need help with dictation. I've got to be able to dictate things or to get this down on screen, but I can't type for whatever reason." And we really work a lot, believe it or not, with Microsoft Dictate stuff. Occasionally, we'll introduce a one-handed keyboard when that's necessary or called for. But I spend a lot of time teaching people how to use the built-in services of Microsoft Dictate and voice control, whatever they call their brand of that.
OLEG:
Have you been in a situation where a newly discovered disability or an emerging disability was no longer compatible with someone's research interests? Does that cause people to despair? And if so, "I'm going to retire. I'm just going to collect my pension is all." And how do you deal with that despair?
NOLAN:
Well, ultimately you certainly can't force anyone not to do those things, if that's what they really want. But we do try to approach them with ideas and potential solutions. Some of it's really low-tech stuff. My supervisor tells a great story of a nurse who over at the medical center who was dealing with... I think her story was that she was dealing with ongoing and increasing hearing loss. And they solved the problem. Well, they're like, "How's she going to hear a heartbeat with a simple stethoscope? We don't even know how she's going to be able to do those things." Well, we solved the problem by getting an oscilloscope-type thing in there, and allowing her to use that and look at the wave patterns coming from that, in addition to the other things.
And now, then we had all kinds of fully hearing-capable nurses who were saying, "Wow, that thing's really accurate. Hey, we want that." So you do see that experience too. The short answer to your question is you can't force these folks to stay on. If they really are convinced that it's all over, you ultimately can't talk them out of that. The success of assistive technology, and you know this from personal experience, is both a technology and an attitude issue. If you think, "Hey, maybe this might work, if I find some workarounds or if I do these things," then you're going to be much more likely to succeed than if you just throw your hands up. "Well, I can't do that. That's out of the picture. It's never going to happen."
OLEG:
Well, I'm going to sound like an old grumbler, so forgive me for grumbling. You just talked about persistence and accessibility, or accessibility building character. And in those good old times, or whatever old times, we had to work with the jumpers, set the IRQs and so on. We had to figure it out and we had to make an effort. Now, today, accessibility is a right. And I fully agree with this. But on the other hand, I'm feeling sometimes that we see the world owing us accessibility. To the point of, rather than figuring out the issue on our own, we would go to a Nolan Crabb or somebody like that and we would say, "I need my accessibility yesterday." Am I exaggerating that, or would you agree to some extent?
NOLAN:
No, I don't think you are. And again, I want to stress that my perspective is strictly mine and not that of my employer under any circumstances. I'm just going to be blunt and say it, and whatever happens to me happens, I guess. I do fear that we are dealing with an increasing number of what I'm going to call reflexive screamers. And these are folks who, rather than say it's correct that shouldn't have to be on you to change that jumper or flip that dip switch, or whatever. I get that, and I don't disagree. On the other hand, I worry about people who just, this isn't done exactly to my specifications, therefore it's somebody else's fault. That frustrates me a lot. That can be true, please don't misunderstand. But at some point, you as an individual need to at least stop and think about what your responsibilities are. That's just my perspective. A short answer is I do worry about a climate in which rather than seeking cooperation in bridge building... And sometimes you just can't, I get that. There are people and companies who are so recalcitrant and so unwilling that it does in fact take serious advocacy. No argument here with that. I don't think we'd have an accessible iPhone if there hadn't been court cases. I just think we need to find some better balance, that's all.
OLEG:
But Nolan, there is another side to this. Blindness organizations often insist on us having to fight for our rights. And sometimes I think, why should we? A sighted person does not have to fight for accessibility. If somebody released a phone that does not show anything on half or even a quarter, or even 15% of its screen, that phone just would not be purchased by anybody. It would be off the market immediately. Nobody would have to fight. I'm just blind or visually impaired. I want to lead a good comfortable life. I don't want to fight for anything, and it's unfair to make me fight for accessibility. Why should I become a fighter just because I'm blind?
NOLAN:
I don't disagree with a word you've said. In fact, I've had situations where I've confronted the infuriating unfairness of inaccessible things and pieces of software. And I respect that. It really does frustrate, and it should. And you shouldn't have to endure that stuff. And so, it's not fair. But there's still a certain element in which, if we can, we ought to try to build bridges.
Super quick example. My veterinarian switched to a different online pharmacy. I have an aging guide dog, he's just really crippled with arthritis, et cetera. I have to use their online pharmacy in order to purchase his prescriptions. When they made the switch to the new pharmacy, the new group was just phenomenally not accessible. And my first thought was, "Well, that's it. I'm getting an attorney, and boy, we're going to take care of this. This is not going to..." And I thought, well, now wait a minute. This veterinarian has worked with you on three different dogs over 17 years. Do you not think maybe to reach out to them first?
Well, they weren't aware of the issue. They hadn't thought... And yes, they should have thought about it. I get it. I'm not trying to be an apologist. My point is quickly this. When they finally helped me get in touch with someone at that pharmacy who knew the code, the web coding and so on, I was actually able to show her where the problems were. And they hadn't thought about it. They should have, and had not. And I don't know what the outcome will be. The veterinarian has switched me back to the previous pharmacy, and so my poor old dog will continue to get his pain meds uninterrupted. But it's a tough line to walk. I don't disagree with you that we shouldn't have to do this. On the other hand, sometimes the best self-advocates are the ones who can reach out in reason and say, "This doesn't work. Let's try to find new solutions."
OLEG:
Nolan, I'll have to press you on this one. How do you know when to fight for your rights and be tough? And on the other hand, when to reach out and build bridges?
NOLAN:
I think a formula that I have found seems to be really reliable is to try to reach out first. And then, if that fails, you go ahead and remove all the stops and you press forward with whatever you have to do. Some years ago I had thought about the option of suing my local library, my public library, because the OverDrive app in those years was abysmally inaccessible. And I went to the local library here and said, "Guys, this is what I'm thinking of doing." And I brought the technology and showed them why it was a problem.
Well, I didn't have to file that lawsuit. And there were other blind and visually impaired men and women who became advocates for accessible local public library technology. And ultimately, the current issue of the OverDrive app is far better. And to the best of my knowledge, we never had to actually sue a public library to force that library to say, "Hey, we're under a lot of pressure here." Now, maybe I'm wrong, and maybe that happened and I'm just not aware. But the short answer to your question is, I think the best approach is to try to reach out first and try to explain what's going on. And they may say at that point, "We know it's going on. And frankly, we don't care." Well, if that's the case, then there's a different kind of re-education that has to happen.
OLEG:
Changing the subject for a minute and getting a bit personal. You know I've been working with assistive technology for about 30 years. And I like it. I enjoy it. But sometimes I get tired of it. You've been at it for much longer than I have. Does that feeling of getting tired seem familiar?
NOLAN:
I get a little tired as well. And on those days when that happens I will deliberately walk away from email lists or things that pump out lots of assistive technology information, and I'll just step away from it for two or three days and do other things, and then perhaps come back to it when I'm a little refreshed and ready to go. But I do think you need to do everything in your power to retain your personal innate curiosity about your world. If you lose that, then keeping up not only becomes tiresome, but it becomes impossible.
Can I just share a super quick example? And I don't want to belabor this or waste your time, but it's along the lines of what we're talking about. I got a call from a magnificent professor in one of our colleges here a few days ago. He has lost some vision. A lot of vision, actually. He called and said, "I'm writing my book and I want to use Microsoft Dictate to do my book. And one of the things I need it to do is create headings in documents for me. I want heading level two and a heading level three, and so on." Well, he's never been able to get it to work. I did the same thing. I found the same problems he had. The Microsoft Dictation would say, "heading level two" in my document when I attempted to tell it that.
And I went to various AI iterations, I went to ChatGPT. I even went to Grok, for goodness sake, and any number of some of these others. All of them gave me these wonderful syntaxes that they insisted would work if I spoke them in terms of putting heading levels in my documents. And none of them did. I spent three work days changing things, trying new syntaxes, working with this. Finally, I went to FSCompanion, gave it the same question, how do I create headings using dictation in Microsoft Word? FSCompanion was the only product that came back to me and said, "Don't think that's possible. Right now doesn't look like you can."
I was just liberated. I thought, my goodness, finally I found one of these AI products that are... But my point is that it was an innate curiosity that drove me on. And say, "There has to be a way. There's got to be a way to do this." And I would just try and try and try all kinds of different options. It may be out there and I just haven't stumbled on it. I'll be the first to admit that I'm far from perfect at having all the answers. I don't even come close. But if you lose that internal curiosity about things, it's going to become much harder.
OLEG:
Is it true that technology alienates people from one another?
NOLAN:
Yeah, I think it can at least. And I worry that one of the negative byproducts of AI will be the inability for all of us to make life friends. I worry that we will start to rely more heavily on these things. And the programmers will build this stuff in such a way that they're going to make it feel like this AI is your good buddy. Your real friend. Is someone you can count on, someone who can respond to you even when you're emotional, et cetera, et cetera. And those are all fine things. But I worry so much that in expending our energies to make friends with the AI, we are not doing the same thing to make friends in real time under real life circumstances with those around us. And that's terrifying in a world where we are already polarized in so many areas. The last thing we need is to lose the ability to craft friendships with those who may see the world differently from us, but who are still worthy of our association and we're still worthy of theirs. I hope that AI doesn't make it so easy to be its little friend, or to be our little friend, that we lose the ability. And you see this in social media. Yeah, you may have 3,000 Facebook friends. Or however many, I don't know. But in so doing, are you now reducing your ability to actually have true good friends in life who are far better than any AI, far better than social media at seeing through the hard times? I don't know. It scares me a little bit when I think about it.
I worry too, that in many instances blind and visually impaired people have the potential to isolate themselves more so than perhaps other groups. And we come up with all kinds of reasons why that might happen. And I just am terrified that the technology will attempt to overpower our ability to reach out in a sense and have a community. It's a sobering thing.
OLEG:
Again, getting a bit personal. Sometime ago I would be thinking, okay, what would my super device be? And I remember 15 years ago thinking, oh, my super device would be something I could put in my pocket, and it would read my books and it would tell me the weather, and it would answer my questions. Guess what? I don't have to dream of that anymore. The way you see that with your life experience, is there still that element of dream in technological development, or have we realized our potential and that's not something that should be pursued as a dream?
NOLAN:
I tend to be innately an optimist. I tend to think that, in spite of everything, our best days may still lie ahead. And for that reason, I think it's Ill-advised to give up on the dream. We may have achieved what was for me science fiction years ago of the device that you've described and is now certainly a reality. But are there other areas where... And I don't know what those are exactly. I'm not sure what my super device would be. At this point I feel like I already have it, to a great degree. But I think as society changes, there will be new dreams. And dreams, in many respects, hopes, if you will, are often the product of the very young. And I think the rising generation has a tremendous opportunity to dream new dreams and perhaps build things that we would never have contemplated that are positive things, good things.
I'm not sure exactly what those are. If you ask me right now, well, what's your dream device? I would tell you, well, it's right here. I'm getting a lot of my needs met. But I think that there may very well be new dreams that will come to pass. And I'll be one of the ones who say, "Yeah, that would be really good. I would like to have that. That would be a good thing." I do maintain that I think our best days, in many respects, lie ahead.
OLEG:
Well, I wish we could continue, but I'm afraid we've got to end this conversation. I'm glad we're doing so on this enthusiastic, encouraging, and optimistic note. Nolan, thanks for being with us. Thank you for sharing. I enjoyed it tremendously. I hope our audience did too.
NOLAN:
Well, I'm honored to be with you. It's such a pleasure. And I'm grateful for the privilege to be part of this today. I really do appreciate it. Thank you so much.
OLEG:
This was Nolan Crabb. And for now we've come to the end of this episode of FSCast.
You know, I like to travel. And in a month we're going to meet again and we'll do some more traveling. How about that? For now though, let me remind you that you can go to freedomscientific.com/training to find out more about our training events. Also for training-related questions, please write to training@vispero.com.
For FSCast-related feedback write to fscast@vispero.com. And also we got a power tip last month, which I'm hoping to present in June. For now, however, we've come to the end of our May episode of FSCast. I'm Oleg Shevkun, and for all of us here at Vispero, wishing you all the best and have a great time. Bye.