All News and Views

In partnership with the White House's initiative to vaccinate 70% of Americans by July 4, Uber and Lyft will offer free or discounted transportation to vaccination sites nationwide between now and then. Read on to find out the particulars of each company's offer and how to access them.

Apple has announced improvements to VoiceOver's image recognition features among other forthcoming updates, as a part of a Global Accessibility Awareness Day press release.

On the 10th anniversary of Global Accessibility awareness Day, a new nonprofit seeks to take accessibility awareness to the next level and further embed it within organizational culture.

GoodMaps has brought their free outdoor and indoor navigation app to the United Kingdom and Ireland. The successor to Nearby Explorer has been available in North America since last fall.

I've reviewed your options for managing screen time with iOS, but until recently, did not believe there was an accessible way to do this on windows.

Windows does have solutions to measure screen time built in. However, these are mostly geared towards family screen time management. Options for an individual user to manage their onscreen time are sorely lacking natively. There is no option to set specific apps as active, choose how long you spent in each app, or temporarily blocked distracting apps and web sites.

Recommended by Zapier on this list of The 7 best apps to help you focus and block distractions, The suite of apps by cold Turkey software attempts to change this. Fortunately, unlike other apps of its kind, these are also accessible.

Cold Turkey offers three different apps that tackle the problem in slightly different ways. First, cold Turkey blocker lets you designate apps and web sites as off - limits either for a particular interval of time, until the computer is restarted, or until a password is entered. Cold Turkey Micromanager takes the opposite approach, instead allowing you to choose the apps you want to be able to access at any given time and blocking everything else. Finally, Cold Turkey Writer is a minimalist text editor which forces you to focus on the active document.

Read on for a walkthrough of using all three apps, features, pricing, and of course, accessibility.

APH will be sponsoring a free symposium for educators, students, and coating professionals Tuesday, May 11 through Friday, May 14. It is free to attend, features panels and talks from blind and visually impaired coders throughout the industry, and will provide resources for blind and visually impaired students and educators. There will be opportunities to win cash prizes and Amazon gift cards as well.

A new version of Voice Dream Reader has been released, bringing new fonts, Bookshare changes, improved cloud services and more. Read more about the update below.

Recently, I decided to experiment with twitter on the web after some lingering frustrations with existing Windows clients. Is it a practical solution? Well... Maybe. Some significant issues exist on the web as well, but Twitter's Webb client has plenty of reasons to recommend it.

Shortly after their most recent screen reader voices survey, Microsoft is launching another survey on your experiences with screen readers. Hopefully, this data will lead to even more advancements in screen reader accessibility and usability in the coming months and years. Read more and take the survey below.

Another major conference is happening both virtually and free this weekend. The 61th Annual California Transcribers and Educators for the Blind and Visually Impaired Conference is happening through Saturday and includes 80 professional workshops and a virtual exhibit hall.

Starting this month, users will receive a random promo each month on a topic voted on by Aira agents. Read on to find out more about the first promo and how to find out about new monthly promos.

As reported ffirst on Blind Bargains, Hims has announced the BrailleSense 6, a new braille keyboard notetaker with 32 cells.

It's the end of the line for the I.D. Mate bar code scanners. The email message below was sent out to I.D. Mate customers subscribed to an EnVision America list on January 15th.

Humanware has refreshed their lineup of braille displays, with two models which are much more feature-rich. Read on to find out all about the new Brailliant BI 20X and 40X series displays.

In an effort to understand how screen reader users choose different voices, the Microsoft accessibility team has released a survey. The survey asks questions about how and why users choose a voice, if different voices are used for different tasks, your level of experience with a screen reader, and more. This is a very comprehensive survey, with both selective response and short answer components, that thoroughly investigates the preferences of screen reader users.

Take the survey here

Accessible Apps has released Chicken Nugget version 4.71, bringing AI image descriptions, new sounds, keyboard discovery mode, more
Popular Twitter client Chicken Nugget recently received a major update, bringing improved image descriptions, new sounds, and other improvements. Read on for an in-depth look at what's new, and information about how to use the latest features.

The presidential inauguration ceremony and related events will be offered with audio description and other accessibility accommodations. Events start today at approximately 11:30 AM, with streaming links available from this page.

Timecrest a popular iOS game has a long-awaited sequel. Find out more about Ash and get a richer understanding of Alensia in this sequel game 4 years inthe making.

Recently, I have started using Blue Apron, a meal kit service which aims to help people get more experience cooking. Each week, a box of ingredients arrives, and we use the recipes found in the app to create new and exciting meals. Read more about the process below.

Let's Go Shopping started as an event to help shoppers and business owners connect during Covid-19. And, the biggest event yet is scheduled for this week, full of holiday deals.