All News and Views

Remember 2021? Remember Clubhouse? Tonight, we'll be merging both of these things into a look back and forward audio event. And if you are reading this later on in our newsletter, you can listen to the replay.

You may have seen friends posting their daily results from Wordle, the hot new word game craze. Now, there's an easy way to play the game with a screen reader.

The National Federation of the Blind is nearly doubling the value of it's scholarship program and guaranteeing all winners an $8,000 prize. Applications are available now.

Back just in time for the holidays, Let's Go Shopping is a two-day, virtual mall crawl featuring businesses owned by blind and low vision individuals. We are excited to once again join this dynamic event, November 5 and 6.

J.J. will be presenting two sessions:
Friday, 2 PM Eastern, The Blindshell Classic 2 and Other Cool Stuff
Saturday, 6:30 PM, Tech and Gadgets for the Holidays

There are many amazing small businesses represented at this event, which starts at noon Eastern each day. Go here to read the complete schedule or the Vendor Directory.

For security links, we aren't posting the Zoom link on this website, but there's an easy way to get it. To get more information about Let's Go Shopping events, subscribe to their Email list by sending a blank message to lgs+subscribe@groups.io

Aira has released a new version of their Android app, bringing new bug fixes and improvements. Read on to find out what's new in the update.

From their website,

The Vale is a story driven, action-adventure that utilizes the full potential of 3D audio and haptic controller feedback to deliver visceral gameplay that shatters the barrier between player and character.

As an audio based game, The Vale sets out to breathe new life into medieval combat and provide a truly novel experience for visually impaired and sighted gamers alike.

Read more about the game below.

OneNote is one of the best ways to organize and connect different types of content, from notes to audio files and webpages. It also sinks between iOS, windows, and android, meaning that you will have access to your content on any device.

This is the write-up of a talk I did on Clubhouse several weeks back, demonstrating and going over some use cases. For those who have never used it, OneNote is probably the closest app to Scrivener on iOS that we have available on windows.

Many people who are blind or have low vision do not have independent access to comic books due to their visual nature, the Comics for All project intends to change that. The idea sprang from the concept of audio description because if people can do that for movies, why not graphic novels and comics as well.

The National Federation of the Blind has revoked the convention sponsorship an benefits from AccessiBee, due to questionable business practices by the company.

Read on to find out about a new accessible rpg, Serania: Path of the Scion, available now for both iOS and Android

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.