Blind Bargains

Audio Player Blind Bargains Qast 105: J-Say Surround Baseball

Speakers and dictation are just some of the ground we cover this week. Joe catches up with Brian Hartgen to talk new products, J.J. tosses in a Bose speaker review and a tip plus we throw out a curve ball in the "Last Word". Be sure to limber up in the "on Deck Circle" before you enter the Batter's Box that is BBQ 105.

Sponsor:

Go make it happen with GoVision, the new transportable video magnifier from HIMS. With goVision you get all you'd expect from a transportable read, write and distance video magnifier with OPTACLE character recognition, plus the ability to enlarge and customize files, photos or videos from your cell phone, tablet or computer. Look at a slideshow of pictures from your vacation right from your thumb drive. Bring the world into focus with GoVision.

For more information, call us at 888-520-4467, visit us on the web at www.hims-inc.com and follow us on social media.
[Hims]http://www.hims-inc.com)
Where tradition meets innovation

In The News:

Amazon Brings Over 130 Audio-described Titles to Prime Members, Others

Actiview aims to streamline movie accessibility for millions of hearing and vision impaired

A Preview of New Accessibility Features Set to Come Later this Year in iOS 11, watchOS 4, tvOS 11 and macOS 10.13 High Sierra

Sendero's GPS Apps Updated with Indoor Beacon, Uber Support in Version 3.0

Meet EasyReader for iOS

Supernova v16.04 released

Windows 10 Insider build 16215 brings several new Accessibility features

June's edition of Access World is now online

Interview: Brian Hartgen On What's New At Hartgen Consultancy

We've mentioned the recent release of J Say 15 before in the News section on a previous episode, and Joe thought it would be a good time to catch up with Brian Hartgen and find out what else was new at Hartgen Consultancy. Hear Joe and Brian talk about new webinars, Zoomtext Fusion and a slight hint at a summertime sale.

Mini Review: J.J. on the Bose Revolve and Revolve+ Speaker

J.J. stopped by a Bose store in San Francisco and found two new talking portable speakers. The Revolve and Revolve+ are cylindrical speakers with 360-degree sound and voice prompts similar to the SoundLink Mini. But do they bump as much as their rectangular counterpart? You can get the $199 Bose SoundLink Revolve or the bigger sibling $299 Bose SoundLink Revolve+ from Amazon, or get a pair to blast your house or yard with stereo sound.

Tip: Eat Food On The Road On The Cheap With Amazon Prime Now

If you are the type of person who wants to have snacks, and other important goods, on hand in a hotel room instead of calling in room service... Amazon Prime Now can deliver all sorts of items to you. The website isn't always the easiest way to browse online, we suggest using the app version first, and you will want to check to see if the city you are traveling to is in a Prime Now coverage area. If it is, and you are an Amazon customer, then you have access to groceries and more with a 2 hour delivery window. There are other services you can use, like Instacart, if you find the town you are in falls outside the amazon coverage area. Although you will spend a little more if you choose to use an alternate service.

Sound Off:

darknexus gives us a neat work around to a current problem in iOS [that seems to be fixed in the version 11 betas].

If you want to prevent the expanding of a letter, just put a letter sign in front of it. It's not that hard, and works either with or without auto-translation. Remember, each Braille input is a separate block, translated as such. I'd like to see them change this, however I don't see how they could do so without risking creating more problems than they would solve. Look at JAWS back-translation problems to get an idea of what I'm talking about, especially in nonstandard applications. What we have now is fully consistent, and I'll take that over buggy any day.

Long time listener Jan Brown reminds us of the good stuff that comes from post WWDC iOS releases.

Snarky is so overrated.
It is so easy to write something scathing.

Braille is what made me and continues my praise of Apple.
I use on-screen braille everyday for almost everything.
I still am thrilled when I can write as quickly as a sighted person half my advanced age.
Apple's leadership in accessibility has been taken for granted by many.
I use my phone and i-Pad for almost everything.
My windows ten machine has become my machine for copying compact disks. I can't do it with iOS and even with the wonderful new features coming in the fall which will allow more file sharing and management, copying disks is still something outside the purview of iOS.

There is value for everybody in multiple operating systems.

But, I can still go to a coffee shop, and read the newspaper and all kinds of attachments on my phone easily. It is only because we have seen so much innovation in the past ten years that we become jaded if the latest keynote does not provide hither to unfathomed features.
It is all still pretty magical."

'Lydia Alverson' suggests that we could get Siri's opinion on WWDC.

Dear BBQ team,

I know that WWDC was a few days ago, but I thought I'd share anyway. I have a Siri Easter egg for you. Ask Siri: "What do you think of WWDC"? There are multiple responses to this one. Here's one of my favorites: "I thought there would be more wrestling".

P.S.. Great job on the air fryer demonstration, by the way.

John Wesley Smith chimes in on his process for switching to JAWS from Window Eyes.

"Hey, Guys,

Just a note to say I'm one of those who migrated from Window-Eyes to
JAWS without having to pay anything now. I made the move on May 22nd.
Upon the recommendation of a knowledgeable friend, I uninstalled W-E
first. I tried using Narrator to install JAWS, but found NVDA to be
more user friendly for that.

Unfortunately, I discovered JAWS doesn't play nice on my computer with
Audacity. Narrator works fine with Audacity, so I use that when doing
audio editing. That's an example of the necessity of knowing some
basics of more than one screen reader. I don't use narrator that much
because the key commands are so vastly different than W-E, JAWS or
NVDA. I suspect I'll be getting better acquainted with both Narrator
and NVDA as time goes on. But as I told a friend after switching to
JAWS, I can only learn one mind numbing set of key commands at a
time--and that has to be done slowly.

I'm one of those partially sighted guys who used to use the physical
mouse for several things with Window-Eyes which I never took time to
learn key commands for. Because JAWS doesn't allow me to do that, I'm
having to learn more key commands out of necessity. I'm still learning
how JAWS sees web pages as compared to Window-Eyes.

Actually, making the leap to JAWS hasn't been as difficult as I
anticipated. There are many commands for Windows and various other
programs which will work regardless of the screen reader. On the other
hand, there are several web pages that no screen reader will work well
with.Also, I hope things can be worked out more favorably for screen
readers to use the Edge browser soon.

For anyone who hasn't made the switch from W-E to JAWS, I say, if you
don't have to lay out any bucks right now, go ahead and do it.

Keep up the good work. Joe, happy landings on to something enjoyable
and lucrative."

Last Word:

Music and the "National pastime" occupy the focus of this week's journey into the obscure.
Bladerunner theme in major key

[Baseball Team s Father s Day Promotion Is Straight Out Of Maury Povich](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jacksonville-jumbo-shrimp-pregnancy-test_us_59417e00e4b0d3185486b70c?ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000025 ion=weird-news)

Get weird with 10 of the best Minor League promotions

Two more shows until we jet off to the summer conventions. Then, as is our custom, tons of audio will fall from the sky with interviews from both NFB and ACB Exhibit Halls. But we hope there will be more things to talk about until the end of this month. Tune in next week to see if we find audio that might just be considered "podcast-worthy".

Go to the description page

Check out our audio index for more exclusive content
Using the Able Player media player by Terrill Thompson

Copyright 2006-2024, A T Guys, LLC.