Tricia explains to you the Blind girl designs an Unmute present shirt with a.
Mouth exclaiming into a microphone and there's little sound triangles coming from the mouth and we took the sound triangles and we expanded them 10 inches all across the chest of the print. On the top triangle in a very clean font and 3D tactile ink is the word unmute and the triangle is metallic silver and underneath the second triangle says in a font that's called Rock. So it's kind of a cool edgy font and 3D tactile ink is the word be heard.
You can get your exclusive Blind Girl Designs and Unmute Present Partnership Apparel by heading over to Unmute show and choosing the Blind Girl Designs Partnership link or or go to blindgirldesigns.com and search for unmute.
This has been an ACB community call.
This Community Unmuted. Brought to you by Club Unmute was hosted on Saturday, January 18, 2024.
Welcome everyone to Unmute. It is good to be back and see everyone. For all of you guys who've been here for a long time, welcome back and all of the new faces that are here, welcome, welcome. We obviously are on new days and times, so always the first and third Saturday of the month at 11am East coast time. So good to see everyone. Also, just want to remind everyone that we will go through all first questions so that we can give everyone an opportunity to be able to get their questions answered. And if we have time, then we can take second questions. Also, please be respectful to each other so everyone can have a fair shot at getting their question answered the same way you would want. And as always, we have Michael with us. How you doing, Michael Babcock?
I'm doing great, Marty. It feels weird getting back behind the microphone and doing something live, doesn't it?
Definitely does. It's been a little while, but I'm glad to be back.
Little. A little rusty there. So. But even though we haven't been in community and doing your Community Unmuted, we have been publishing some content. So I'm going to go over some of that content with you guys here real quick. But I want to thank Chris and Liz for helping us with answering questions today and I think Marty's going to introduce them after he after I hand it back over to him. I do see we have a couple of hands. If you haven't yet, please go ahead and raise your hand so that way we can make sure to get your tech question answered or share a tip with you. So yesterday we published on Jaws Tips Pete published it. So thanks Pete for producing that content and getting it out there. Quick ways to control sliders with Jaws in a unique way I had never thought about doing it that way, so that was pretty fun to edit. And then he also showed you how you can talk to Jaws to get commands performed if you haven't played with that Chris and I sat down on Thursday and talked on Mac Chat Unplugged. I probably should have said Unmuted or something, but honestly GPT came up with Unplugged, so we'll roll with it. And we talked about mastering audio on your Mac, gave my insights on using tools like Loopback, Sound Source, Farrago and Audio Hijack. And we talked about a unique way to use the Braille Doodle to map out your sessions for Audio Hijack. So if you don't have a Braille doodle, we have them at 80, you guys. And then on Monday, because I got the episode a little late and I got busy last week. So on Monday, normally on the third Thursday, second Thursday of the month, all things Lady A with Lucy, who you guys are probably familiar with, she showed you. She showed you a bit about a lady routines and how to set routines. Fun fact. One of the routines she set actually worked, but a little too well. Went off at 4am so you want to give that a listen if you're interested. Digital Bites came out. Pete made an appearance in that episode again, but first Chris shared with you about blood donations and an app to use for blood donations. Pete showed you some tips for Braille navigation and then Marty showed you a hard drive that can help you with backing stuff up. Kind of important in this day and age when you don't know what could happen to have a backup of your information. We do have several other pieces of content that's been published since the last time we met, so I highly recommend doing a search for Unmute presents in your favorite podcast app or head on over to Unmute show to learn more about Club Unmute and the recent episodes published. Marty, do you want to introduce, before we go to our questions, the other two people here?
Sure. I would like to introduce to everybody Liz. How you doing? Liz?
Hello. Doing well. How are you?
Good, good. Liz is going to be here answering questions and helping us out. So thank you very much for that. We appreciate it. And we also have Chris Cook here with us. How you doing Chr.
Hey, doing great, thanks.
And Chris is going to be here also helping us out with questions and all of that good stuff. So you'll hear our Voices, all four of us when we do this show on the weekends. So welcome everyone. And I say, Holly, let's get some hands going.
Okay, up first we have Jane.
Hey, Jane.
Hello. Just want to say that we are at least I am okay in the crazy California fires at the moment. I'm hoping things change. But for now I'm having an interesting problem on my Mac of sending emails and I think I sent the question off. I can't seem to send emails. It keeps asking for an SMTP server. Although I have everything Gmail. I want to Internet account, but I'm a little bit confused.
So I do recall that email. So in the Internet account, what did you do?
Well, it said to go to the SMTP part of it, but I did and I'm on the. I finally upgraded my Mac to 15 point whatever the latest version is now after 6 months of not me doing it.
So here's what I would try when it comes to Google, because Google is its own unique beast and sticks its tentacles into random parts of the operating system is the best way to describe it. So if you go to Internet accounts in system settings and then you find the Google account and press vo space on it and then go to the very bottom, you're going to hear help and vo left arrow once and there will be delete account. Go delete the account and then re add it. And I suspect that'll solve the SMTP issues you're having.
Okay. I have multiple accounts that I do that with. Well, yeah, all of them, right?
Yeah, all of them that aren't working. You could. Do you know which specific account isn't working or are none of them working?
Uh, none of them are.
Yeah. Yeah. So that's where I would start. Marty, Chris or Liz. Do any of you have other suggestions?
That is the suggestion that I was going to suggest.
Yeah. So give that a try, Jane, and let us know if that works. I think that'll fix a lot of your problems because Google doesn't work in the traditional way that email does and has its own way of authenticating. And so if you delete and re add that should solve those problems. And then your email will come back down as well, obviously. All righty, Holly, who do we got.
Next up next is Monica.
Hey, Monica.
Hello, everyone. Okay, my question is, when you're in an app like Telegram or WhatsApp, how do you get people that you don't know to stop adding you to groups or sending you random messages?
Put yourself in private settings so only you can do it. Not other people can do it.
Okay. What?
I think there's a way that you can go in and set yourself to private so you're not publicly being seen by the whole entire world. You're only being seen by who you want to be seen.
Okay, would that would be in Settings then?
Yeah, I believe it's settings and privacy. And each one of those apps is a little different. So you might have to dig through to settings a little bit, but typically that's how you would do it.
Okay, thank you very much. Up next is Petra.
Hello, Petra.
Hey, Petra.
Hi, everyone. So glad to have you on the Zoom calls. I really appreciate it. I have an iPhone 13 mini and I have updated to the latest iOS update. And when I make a phone call without my AirPods, I often wear my AirPods because it's hands free. I love it. But of course I dial the number and then I put the phone to my ear to know that it's ringing. And then I take the phone away from my ear so it goes to speakerphone. And when I do that, I wind up with things that will say phone call and will start telling me how many seconds. Or it will say status bar and start talking. Or it will start naming the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4. Yeah, I don't know why that's happening and how to make it stuff.
Well, you have. So basically what happens is, let's say you're talking on the phone and you have your phone held up to your ear and then you pull your phone away from your ear and it switches to speakerphone. The voiceover cursor automatically lands on the amount of time you've been talking on the phone. So because the voiceover cursor is on, you know that it's continuously changing. So it thinks it needs to tell you. So 1 minute and 1 second. 1 minute and 2 seconds. So what you need to do is move the voiceover cursor off of the timer. So move it anywhere where like you can just put it in the middle of the screen so it sits on number five or something like that. That's not going to change. But that's why you hear that, because if you keep your voiceover cursor on any item on your phone that changes, it's going to announce it whether that's the time or anything like that. If you put it on the number five or something, that will never change. Then it won't announce things to you every second.
Okay, so just when I take it away from my ear, go ahead and touch another spot on the screen to move the cursor.
Correct. That's why I said just like, in the middle of the screen, like on number five or whatever, it's easy to kind of. Right in the middle.
Right.
And the numbers don't change. They just. It'll say number five one time when you first put the voiceover cursor on there, and then it won't say anything else after that unless it bounces back up to the timer or something. So the reason why that's happening is because the voiceover cursor is there. What's that?
Sometimes it goes to the status bar.
Yeah. Well, anything that changes is going to announce it if the voiceover cursor is on there. So the key is to move the voiceover cursor.
Perfect. Thank you.
No problem.
Donna, you're up next. Good morning. I was blessed with a new MacBook Pro for Christmas. Oh, good for you. Yes, I'm very excited about it. I am. So. I'm sorry, I'm trying to unmute myself and Jaws is confusing me. I'll shut up. This is Pete.
Hey, Pete.
So I'm slowly learning stuff. I am hoping eventually, later this in the one when Herbie's offering their classes to take those. But until then, I am trying to learn as much as I can about how to use my Mac. Anybody have any suggestions the best way to go about this? Right now, the way I'm doing it is just figuring what I want to do and do it. If I can't figure it out, to Google it. It's slow, but it's been working. I'm a person who learns by doing. I can't. Yes, I can go and read stuff and understand what it says and do it then, but I more so need to just do stuff to learn it. So, any suggestions?
Do you have any specific tasks? Oh, sorry, Michael, go ahead.
I was just going to say I do have a real quick suggestion, and then Marty can jump in with some ideas. VO Command F8 is a valuable resource because that's a quick start guide that has you perform the actions with voiceover to get familiar with them. So Control Option Command F8 is a good tool to leverage.
Control Option F8.
Command F8. Control Option Command F8.
Control.
Three keys. Those three keys on the bottom left corner of your keyboard and the F8 key.
Oh, okay. Excellent. Thank you.
Marty, did you have something to suggest?
Yeah, I was going to say maybe create a list of things specifically that you want to learn. Because just to say broadly, I want to learn how to use the Mac is kind of broad. So if you have like a something that you want to learn specifically or you have a specific question that you want to ask to maybe know how to do something, I would maybe make a list of those things. And kind of, once you have a list, I would say you can come here and ask us. You can always email us at Feedback Show. You could always take a look at joining bits. They have a chat every Friday and Saturday night. And they're all technology people there that you could ask questions to in the chat. And then I would suggest possibly checking out macgeek app, which is a podcast that's all Mac all the time and all iOS stuff. And they're really great with a lot of tips and tricks and you can email them and ask them questions as well.
So great. Again, there's also Apple this.
Oh, and there's also Apple Viz. There you go.
Okay, great. Thank you. And I will have another question. I'll do it the next round. I want to be fair to people, so.
All right, sounds good.
And at the current time, the BITS chats are not open to just BITS members. So you could just join the BITS announced list, I believe it is, and get that information sent to you without being an actual member. Yeah, I am a member, so I'm good.
I don't. Oh, well, there you go. I would, you know, you can jump in the chats on Friday and Saturday and ask questions there.
Also, this is Chris. Also, I think on Tuesday or Wednesday, sometimes they have Mac Bites with Bis.
It's called.
Yeah, that's a good one. But that's a good one. And like Pete says too, you know, appleviz is great. Sometimes there might be a tutorial in there. Sometimes I will search for if I wanted to learn to do something like creating documents and pages. And I'll put the word tutorial in there. And I come up with some really nice things that people have written in. And even if they're a couple years old, the basics are probably still the same. And so there are a lot of great resources out there. And what is that called again? So Apple Vis. How do you spell that? Apple. A, P, P, L, E, V as in Victor, I as in India, S as in Sam. So it's all. And I'm assuming we didn't ask you if you were using Voiceover. I'm assuming you're using Voiceover. I'm actually going to learn that as a question I was going to ask later. One of them anyway. Yeah, I'm going to have it teach me to Use the voiceover on it. Okay, so the three keys plus the F8 key that Michael mentioned, that's the voiceover. Assuming you have voiceover on. That's the voiceover tutorial or getting started guide. And so, yeah, that has to. In order to execute that Command. Control option. Command F8. In order to do that, you have to have voiceover on. That won't work without voiceover on.
Thank you, Chris.
I would say to send an email to feedbackmute show and we can provide you some resources to get you going and help you out.
Thank you, guys.
And we will make sure to include maxcessibility because, I mean, we have Holly here. Yeah, Holly, good resource to mention too. Appreciate that, Holly. Who do we got next?
Up next we have Gregory.
Hey, Gregory.
Hey, guys. I want to create a recovery code.
For my iPhone in the security section.
Can I edit that?
It's a 28 characters and voiceover says weird stuff. Oh, it just says I can't.
Somebody you can't understand.
Can I. Can I edit that and create my own recovery code? I don't think you can. I think it's created by Apple.
Wow.
Presser. Liz. In the input, I thought it said edit, but I didn't try it because.
I didn't want to. Okay. I didn't know such a thing existed. I'm just used to the passcode. I had no idea there was a recovery code. That's news to me.
Yeah.
When I get. If you, you know, if you put your wrong passcode in too many times.
You'Re locked out for a certain number of minutes. I don't think you're completely locked out.
Oh, I've been completely locked out.
Oh, shoot. Yeah, well, this is Pete again. I think it's after 10 times of a failed password. That actually happened to me once and it's the same weird to get out of it. If you wait a certain amount of time, first it's like one minute and then it'll. After a while it'll expand to three minutes or five minutes to have you try again. So if you. If you get stuck and locked out, I would say wait five or ten minutes before you try again. Yeah, I want to try the recovery.
Call because, you know, I can send that to somebody else to retrieve it to get into the phone.
So.
Yeah. All right, guys, one. One thing to remember while you're creating that full transparency. I actually don't know if you can edit it. I'm assuming you cannot, however, too quick copy it. Just do. Is that it's a four finger, three Finger. Quadruple tap.
Yep.
And that'll copy it to the clipboard. If you do that right after voiceover reads that entire code and then you can go paste it into wherever you're trying to send it for someone to be able to have access to it. Hopefully you'll never have to use it, but then at least you have it copied and you can use it in the future. Okay, that's a second question I'll do later for clip. Copy that, Raise your hand again. We'll come back to that. Thanks a lot.
Okay, up next is Leslie. Hi. I have a Windows 11 computer and somehow I mess my computer up so that when I go into my documents list, it's saying search for a document. So it looks like what it's doing is it's searching for like a word in a document instead of a allowing me to use first letter navigation and go to a file in my list. So I'm hoping someone can tell me how to fix that.
So if anyone else has an idea, feel free to jump in. I would start by trying to use your F6 key and see if F6 gets you to a list of your files like you expect. Because it sounds like Fooocus is getting moved to the address bar area, which is where you can search for files.
Yeah, it's half. You could probably try tabbing from the search box as well. And there's a lot of different buttons to go through, but eventually you should land on the list of documents. I'm trying to think there's an also.
A way that if you press alt.
To bring up the ribbon, you know.
That Explorer gets you to.
There's an option where you can tell Windows Explorer where you want to start. In other words, you can either start on a quick view or there's several different places it gives you to where to try it. But the first thing I would do when you get in that search box, try pressing tab and see if it gets you to at least. Because you want to see your main list of documents, right? Is that what you're saying? I'm seeing them, but if I start typing. So if I start typing like I don't know do, it's taking me to the search documents. It takes me to a place that says search documents. So if I now if I down arrow, then sure, I can find my documents all day long. But I've got. Okay, this is Liz. Is your screen maximized? Is your window maximized? That's the other thought I had too. I will check that, but it happens every time. All right, so let me try again. Okay, I'm back in Documents. Right. Okay. No, it's. Yeah, I just maximized it, Liz, and it's still doing it. So what you're saying is that when you type the first letter of the document you want to find, it's not taking you down to the first document that begins, let's say, with the letter D. Is that what you're saying? Correct. Okay, now that's a new one. Okay. I'm not sure because I've never seen that issue. I don't know what's causing that. What I said about view options is probably not going to be appropriate here.
So I'm going to make a quick suggestion and then we'll jump on, because I don't think we're going to have an immediate answer for you in this case. What I would do is reach out to the Disability Answer desk at Microsoft. You can do that through Be My Eyes if you have that app, or you can go to AKA Ms. Dad, and I can repeat that if you need me to. And they'll be able to figure out, instead of us trying to guess, to figure out what it is, they'll say, oh, go click this button or press this keystroke, and it'll get fixed fairly quickly.
And they can remote into your computer as well. Yeah. I think that's why I'm always hesitant to call Disability Answer Desk, because those folks always want a remote in, and they don't really want to give you the answer because they don't know the answer. They just know how to do it. It. Oh, you know what I mean? That's why that's always my last resort for those folks. I mean, if I have to, I will.
I would still leverage it. It can be very valuable. And just set a boundary and say, I don't want you to remote. I need to know how to do this. And then the reason I recommend using Be My Eyes is because then they can still see your screen because it's a little hard to diagnose what exactly is going on when you're just talking on a phone without being able to see what's going on. So. So that's why I recommend using the Be My Eyes option, because then you can say, I don't want you to remote into my computer, but I'd be glad to let you see my screen so you can walk me through the process I need to take to solve this problem.
But I don't understand how you use Be My Eyes with a phone. And I'm Using a desktop computer. So that doesn't make any sense to me.
So I get that. Be my eyes will use the camera on the back of your phone. So you would hold your camera up and point it towards your screen.
I don't have a monitor hooked up.
Ah, okay. Well, that is challenging for sure.
Plus you have to use your hand. So to me, that's kind of a crazy way to do it.
Gotcha. Well, those are a couple of suggestions.
Yeah, no, I get it.
Unfortunately, I don't have a direct answer. And, Holly, who do we got next?
Amy is up next.
Hey, Amy.
Hello, everybody. I'm embarrassed to ask this. I'm a pretty advanced iPhone user, but the one problem I seem to have encountered and increasingly is if I'm on a call and I get another call, I know how to put a call on hold, I know how to merge calls, I know how to do all that. But if I put the first call on hold and then go to the second one when the second call, when I've concluded that call, I can't get back to the first call that's on hold. And I'm wondering if there's a trick on doing it.
What do you see on your. I'm sorry, what do you hear on your screen? The second call ends.
Oh, it just says call ended.
It just says call ended. So you should be able to flick through and it should say hold selected. And if you double tap that, that should take the first call off hold and reconnect you to them.
Okay.
So you should still see a modified call screen.
Okay. It never says selected. I think I heard. I've heard hold before, but because it was already on hold, I didn't think that that would do it, but I'll try it. Thank you.
Okay. Chris or Liz or Marty?
No. Okay, up next is. Oh, sorry. Were you ready for this?
No, you're good. Holly, who do we go next?
Up next is Judy.
Hey, Judy.
Hey there. So I have a Jaws question and I will readily admit that I did not call Freedom Scientific about this yet because I don't have a whole lot of faith that they're going to be able to answer this. So I'm throwing it out to you guys. So I'm running JAWS 2025 and an old version of Outlook. I think it's like 2016. Ever since I updated to 2025, when I create an email and I'll type in the first letter of the person that I want to send it to, it does not auto populate correctly. So as you would do you would continue with like the second letter. Then it'll start to auto populate with everybody whose name starts with that second letter. And sometimes email addresses that I haven't sent anything to in years will show up what I have. So what I do is if the person is in my address book, I'll go in there and create the email and start the email from there. But if they're not in there, what I've had to do sometimes is like, like type the email like in Notepad or something and then copy it and paste it onto the to field. I have tried arrowing up and down to no avail. I cannot get this to auto populate the way it used to in previous the way it always did. You know what I'm saying? And it's the same version of Microsoft Outlook. You haven't changed that. Haven't changed anything. This only started with jaws 2025. This had never happened before. Do you still have JAWS 2024 on your system by chance? And could you run that and see what does the problem happen with 24 running? Well, it never did. I haven't gone back to it, but it never did. I was wondering just to eliminate variables, I would be interested to know if that happens. Now I did have a sighted person go onto my computer and he. I don't know whether he fixed something. I think at the time when he was looking at it, he said he doesn't see any reason for it, but it was okay after that and then now it's gone back to what it was doing before and I don't think he changed anything. So, you know, it's really maddening.
Yeah, I can imagine. As Liz was suggesting, trying 2024 to me would say, okay, this version of 2025 is simply not compatible with this older version of outlook, especially if 2024 is working the way that it originally worked. Otherwise, if it's not, then something probably Outlook settings at some point, even if you weren't aware of it. And that's why it would be important to try with 2024. And that's probably what Freedom Scientific is going to have you do as well.
Okay, so what's the easiest way to. Well, I do have a hotkey still set up for 2024, so just unload jaws and then start it with 2024.
Is that you can also go to your Run dialog with Windows key R and just Type in JAWS 2024 and hit enter and that'll launch the 2024 version. If for some reason your hotkey isn't working as you expect it to.
Okay, and then that. But then I could just go back to 2025 after that. Okay.
Yep. And again, you do that the same way you go to run with Windows key R, type jaws 2025 if your jaws 2025 hotkey isn't working as well.
Okay. All right, thanks. I will give that a shot. Appreciate it.
Who do we got next, Holly?
Up next is Stacy.
Hey, Stacy.
Hi. Yeah, ever since they updated the Blind Shell Classic 2 to conform with the Blind Shell Classic 3, I've been having trouble with the Zoom app, raising my hand. And so that's why I've been using the old, you know, call in method. But I'd like to go back to the Zoom app. What do I do?
Yep. So I will be fully transparent with this because this is how I don't want to mince meat or anything, whatever that saying is. I hate Zoom on the Blind Shell Classic too. It is way too complicated and a process that is not consistent. What I would try, and I don't guarantee it'll work, is I would try pressing and holding the top bar when you open Zoom and you're in a Zoom meeting. And then when you hear the first element, I forget the exact wording of it, but press and hold the top bar, and that'll take you there. Then press and hold the okay button for about two seconds. You'll feel a gentle vibration. And sometimes this shows the meeting controls towards the bottom of the screen. Again, this isn't consistent. And if anyone using the Blind Shell has a better way of doing it, please raise your hand and share.
I can't even get past the okay. I just want, I mean, I mean, I, I, I can't get the okay button after I, after it, you know, goes in. It just doesn't. I don't see. I mean, I can get the okay button and then I, I can go into the rooms, but it locks me down every single time. I can't even get the reactions or anything.
Yeah, I completely get that, Stacy. Hopefully someone I see there are a couple of other blindshell users on the Zoom call, so if they have any suggestions, hopefully they'll raise their hands and they can chime in with those. Okay. Okay. So stay tuned and we'll see if we can get an answer for you.
Otherwise, I'm wondering if I need to get an account, solve the problem.
You don't have to have a Zoom account to use Zoom on the Blind Shell, and I don't think that's going to make a Difference for you.
You don't think it's going to make any difference?
I do not. Nope.
Because, you know, before this update, I didn't have any trouble raising my hand.
I definitely get that. And Stacy, I don't know if you've done it yet, but it would be worth shooting an email to infolinechill.com to ask Dominica if she has any answers.
Oh, I've done it several times. No answer. All right, I will follow up.
Stacy, we're going to move on to the next hand. Appreciate you today. And Holly, who do we got next?
Currently you do not have any more hands.
I appreciate that. It's kind of interesting, that stuff. Oh, Gregory, I see you raised your hand.
I was gonna say you just got a hand.
Hold on.
Yeah, I was gonna ask you guys.
About a accessible clipboard app for my iPhone 14 Pro.
A good, good clipboard app. Hey, Gregory, it's Chris. What do you need to do with the clipboard? Because the paste already, when you do the. The three finger quadruple tap, it will. And then also using the editor, the edit, you can copy and paste. So there's some built in options. Is there something that the built in options are not doing for you or do you need. Do you need to feel more comfortable with the built in options?
And I. Can I go back and find previous clipboard items?
I mean, no, I don't believe so.
That's what I want it for. To go find.
Cool. Okay, that, that's good. Items that I've clipped back.
You know, I just want.
I don't want to go searching for.
One and I get one and it's not accessible. I just wonder if you guys know one. Marty did. Were you. Did you have an idea?
Yeah, there's a couple and one of them, I can't remember the name and the other one's called Paste, but I need to go back and make sure that it is accessible. Used to be mostly accessible with some minor issues, but it's been a long time since I've tried it. So I need to check it out and see if it still is accessible or not. But I cannot remember what the other one is for the life of me. But there's a paste.
Yeah. Yeah. So Gregory, if you could drop us an email to feedbackmute show that'll remind Marty to go look at Paste and see about its accessibility. I don't have a good clipboard manager on iOS, so hopefully that'll work.
I'll check out the other one. I'll try to find it and Let you know what that one is too, and I'll make sure it's accessible as well.
Go. Paste is another one that I'm furiously searching over here on the Internet right now. I don't know. C, O, paste, P, A, S, T, E. I have no experience with it, but that is all I have right now. Sorry, Liz. I was just going to say, too, we could also do an Apple Viz search as well on the accessible Clipboard app. And what was the name of the app again, Liz? P Y, C O. And then paste. All one word, P Y, pa. Okay, thanks.
All right. Thank you, Gregory. Hopefully we can get an answer for you on there. Holly, do we have any other hands?
We do. Up next, we have Miriam.
Hey, Miriam.
Hello, guys. I feel a little crazy asking this question when I'm sure it's been asked many times. What would you recommend as an accessible printer piece?
An accessible printer?
Yes. I do not have one and I would like to get one.
So accessible printer is an interesting concept.
Can I jump in here?
Go for it, Marty.
I was going to say. So really, what you want in a printer is a printer that will work with. Well, first of all, let me ask you, are you using it from where? Your computer or from your phone or where do you want the printer to work?
Definitely the computer. If it can do the phone, that would be nice.
So there are printers out there, for example, like hp, and they have a wireless connection which you can either use over the wireless connection that the printer broadcasts on its own, or they have printers that you can add to your actual WI FI network. Either way, they're really not that accessible. But once you get them hooked up, then the software on your phone is accessible or on your computer is accessible. So once you get it hooked up and it's on either its own network or broadcasting on your WI fi, the software on your devices, you can go through and use it and print and whatever, and you don't really need to worry about it after that. So that's really. There's not going to be a printer that I know of where it's going to actually be accessible. Because once you have it set up, there's nothing really to do with it. You know, it just prints from your devices.
Okay. Yeah, this is. This is Chris. I have a brother laser printer, and it does black and white. It doesn't do colors. So you might want to decide if you want ink shut or if you want laser and if you need color or not, that those are decisions. And they mostly, I think, all do airprint. I don't know if Apple still calls it that, but I can be downstairs here and print something out from my phone upstairs and I hear it going and it's great. It's always on standby, ready to roll. So I like a laser printer because they're not terribly expensive, but they also don't use ink that dries up because I don't use a printer very often. But when I want one, I really want one. And if I haven't used it in several months, the ink dries up. So that's another thing to consider. So accessibility is out the window, really. I have sighted assistance. Set it up or because you have to type in your WI FI password and you know, it's a pain in the Behind a setup first. But then after that, if I did need to change some settings on it, I use aira or somebody could probably use Be my Eyes to if there. And this is another thing. If there are buttons on top of the printer, which there are on my brother laser, there's an up and down button, there's a menu button. So it's not a touch screen. So I'd be thinking about that too, because yeah, with sighted assistance, I'm on my phone using aira, let's say, and they're watching my screen because I have my phone camera looking at the little printer screen and they'll tell me which button to press, how many down arrows or up arrows. Press the okay button, I move over here, I press this, and they help me like reset my paper size for photo paper and then set it back to regular paper. And so that's how I navigate that whole situation. So. And even, you know, if you were on a FaceTime call with someone, it wouldn't have to be Ira be my eyes. You could do that too. So I would be focusing more on whether you want a laser or inkjet and. Or whether you want make sure there are buttons on it that you can control in case you need sighted assistance.
Yes, I would, I would say in terms of all of those features, HP or Brother are good places to look. And I would say that if you're going to be doing it for mostly documentation, then get a laser printer because it'll print way more. You can get like 1200 prints opposed to 300 on an inkjet. And typically the cost is about equal to refill the cartridge. So if you're just using it for office stuff, laser all day long, I would say. And it's only about 150 to $200.
Yep, yep. And it doesn't dry out. And you don't have to worry about things not printing and not seeing that they didn't print because the ink dried up. That's a pain, too. Yes, that's what I was thinking about, too. So my current printer, all I've been able to use on it, it had. It does has touch buttons. All I've been able. And it's very, very old. So my oldest son is 32, and we bought it as an open box when he was in seventh grade, so that's how old it is. Goodness. Now you need a new printer. I'd been able to baby it all these years to still use the copying part of it. Will the brother or the HP with what you're with laser also copy pages if I need. I don't know if they have that feature or not. I know mine doesn't because the more features it has like that, the more complicated it is to use. So I've never gotten an all in one that has copy scan this and that because it just makes things more complicated. If you need to copy something, I don't know if you took a picture of it and just printed it or, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. So the other question I had for you, Kristen, when you were talking about using your phone from downstairs and printing upstairs, is it. Is your printer also connected to your computer as well as your phone? It's all WI fi, so. Okay. Yeah. It recognizes the WI FI network that my computer and my phone is on, and it's also connected to that same WI fi network, which is why the whole thing works without a cable. Thank you very much for being so patient with my questions. I appreciate it. Oh, no, they're great questions. No, you're. You're. You're fine. Yeah. And thank you.
We always say there's no dumb questions, so it's okay.
Well, thank you for debunking my idea of an accessible printer. Lots of experience with that.
Thanks, Miriam. Who do we got next, Holly?
Up next is Rich.
Hey, Rich. He has blind shell answers.
Good morning, everybody. I hope to. And good to hear you guys back.
Good to hear you guys back on the air.
In answer to Stacy's question, okay, if.
If she's having trouble getting the zoom.
To work, what she can do on.
The Blind Shell Classic 2 is go.
Into Zoom, go into Settings, then go.
To meetings, Then you hit your down bar and you go past where it says general and then there's a box.
That says always show meeting controls.
You hit the OK button, and that.
Will check that box.
And then once that box is checked.
Then when she or anyone else goes.
Into a zoom, call the controls like your mute and unmute your reactions, all.
That will just automatically pop up like they do on a computer.
You're amazing, Rich. Now, do you know if on the blind shell, you have to be signed into an account to give you access to those settings?
No, no, no, no, no.
Okay.
I'm using my blind shell right now.
I use it all the time on Zoom. And once that box is checked, it'll fix it.
And as far as contacting blindshell, the.
Address I used to contact them is always support@blindshell.com and they get back a lot quicker. Perfect.
So thank you for that, Rich. And I think you just gave me some content for Wednesday's shelf on show. Yeah, thank you for that. That's awesome and perfect. Holly, who do we got next?
Next. All right, up next is Donna.
Hey, Donna.
All right, guys, one more question. So on my phone, I have my emails combined, but then I also have my Google email, you know, separate, because I didn't like them combined because it wasn't real good about letting me know what was separate, you know, what the separate ones were. And I didn't like the way it looked. So on the Mac, is there a separate app for my Gmail?
There is, actually.
Oh, good.
You have to pay for it. But I use it, and it is very, very close to. To the mail app that you use on your computer currently, the regular Mac mail app. And it does work with voiceover, so it's pretty cool. Let me tell you what it's called. It's not. You won't have to learn another thing. And it works great with Gmail. Hold on one second.
This is Chris, though. But if you're using the regular Mac mail, can you not just go to the account or the inbox that you want to look, you want to. You want to read the mail from.
It's called Mime Stream. Sorry, I had to get that out.
So go ahead, you could.
Chris, I think I see what you're saying. So in the Mac mail, if you stop interacting with the list of your messages and you press vo left arrow twice, you'll get to a list of your mailboxes, and then you can interact with that. And I know you're new to Voiceover, so interacting and stop interacting might not make a lot of sense right now, but you'll understand that concept when you go through that voiceover tutorial. But interact with the mail mailbox list and then vo right Arrow down that list to find the email account that you want. So, for example, your Gmail account and I press VO space, I don't know if that's necessary. And then you stop interacting. Vio right arrow twice. And that'll get you over to the list of messages and then interact with that. And that'll only show you your Gmail emails.
So it will take me into separate ones. Yes, I think it's going to be easier than learning a whole a new program. But also it would give you practice in using Voiceover when you start to learn it, because the things that Michael was just mentioning apply to other apps as well, like the Notes app. And you know, so it's kind of uniform. It is, it is. You'll find out.
So what would happen is when you have your mail open on the left side, you will have a list of items, you'll have all mail, and then under that you'll have the first account, let's call that, you know, Gmail. And then the second one would be something else. And so when you click on all mail, it'll show you all the mail in your inbox, everything. If you only want to see Gmail, then you go to the Gmail one and it will only show you the Gmail one. And the reason why Chris was saying that's good to know, understand and kind of learn is because all of the Apple apps, mail, notes, all of those things, they all kind of run in that column style. So once you learn how to use one of those and do interacting and uninteracting, then it will be easy across the board for all the other apps because the concept is the same once you learn it.
All right. And there was a word that Mike was saying that I wasn't catching this topic it moving.
It was a one of the interacting and uninteracting. He was saying.
No, it was another word when he.
Was vo left arrow. VO arrow.
Oh, that's voiceover is what that's short for.
Okay, Control option right, Control option left. Okay.
When you're using voiceover, the short name that everyone uses is vo because you have to use two keys. So they always, instead of saying control option, they say use the VO key keys plus and then whatever command it is to make an action happen. So like VO space or vo something, you know, so when someone says vo, they say that's short for the VO keys. Using voiceover, that's what that's short for.
Okay, great. You guys have been a big help. Thank you for your help and thanks.
Yeah, no problem. And like I said, if you email us, we'll get you some resources.
And I appreciate all my ignorance, but. Oh no, it's, it, I'm trying, I want to learn the verse. Yes, I can do it visually right now, but I'm trying to prepare for the future is my vision has been slowly decreasing. We don't quite know why, but I, I, I do like the magnifier on there, but it's making it hard to do some things efficiently and, and I'm starting to see that, that even on my, when I use my Windows computer. That's why I'm trying to start, you know, learning screen reader stuff because I just want to be efficient and not be playing around, you know, wasting. That's so wise because you, you're preparing and, and there's so many great resources out there. So. Yeah, we're happy to, happy to help you out and thank you showing up. Yeah. Because when I'm doing stuff, I'm seeing that I had a good example that when I was taking the, this class the fall when I would try to do some things and I'm like, wow. If I just, I was seeing, when I was using the shortcuts, when I was learning them, then I was like, well, this is faster than I do it the other way. Or it's helping me find stuff that I wouldn't see when it's blown up too big. So they're really right when they say if you have to put it up to a certain, you know, if you have to make it a certain big, if it's too big, you just aren't going to see it. You're better off just to go with screen reading because the magnification can get too big to a point and it's, it's just futile. So, and that's what I'm running into now. I'm, I'm, I see enough to be dangerous, but and, and, and want to still do it, but I'm realizing it's detrimental now. So, so thank you guys. Sure. And we all started at the beginning, you know, so. Yes, thank you.
We're at the 10 minute mark here, so we should try and get through some of these last hands we got.
Okay, up next is Adrian.
Hey, Adrian.
Adrian. What up, Michael?
How y'all doing?
Hey, Adrian, how's it going?
Yeah, chilling, chilling.
Quick question for Michael. Michael, did you receive that demo idea.
For showing Alexa on blindshell last month? If I haven't published it, then probably not. Can you resend it over?
Okay, I'll definitely Do that. And also, thank you for Rich breaking down that zoom, because out of all.
The stuff on the blindshell, I never knew how to use zoom on the blind shell. My God.
My God. See, now you can say you're fully rounded now.
Yes, sir. Hey, Adrian, if you want to record a quick audio show on how to set up, then go for it, because I didn't know that either. Yeah, yeah, I'll definitely listen back to that recording, what Rich said, and I'll try it out. You know, that sounds good. Peace.
Thanks.
Okay, and the last hand for now is Amy.
Amy, welcome back.
Hi. Thank you. I just wanted to mention. I'm sorry, I didn't catch her name. The person who was asking about printers. It just so happens that the Wire Cutter show, which is a podcast from the New York Times where they evaluate products. This. Not this last one, that one was on dishwashers, but the prior one was on printers. And they talked about printers, the different considerations about getting a printer, and the one that they recommended, and it is for a laser printer printer, which is a brother printer. I don't remember. I know it's hll something dw. I don't remember all the numbers, but I got it on Amazon for. For a friend who I'm going to set it up for for $160. And you can also get some very good descriptions about it if you use InnoSearch.
Perfect.
Amy, thank you very much. Yes, InnoSearch. AI can give you a lot of information and answer questions about stuff before you purchase it. So, Mike.
Yeah, it has four buttons, by the way. They're actual buttons. I think that's.
Or talk. Anything about accessibility or.
No, they didn't talk about accessibility. One of them. Have you. You, Marty, you just hit one of my campaigns. As a matter of fact, I just wrote to Consumer Reports because I'd like them to include accessibility when they do their ratings. And nobody. No mainstream publications ever do that.
Well, they should. It's a part of all of these things. It should be just like everything else. It's like turning up volume. You know, nobody talks about the volume knob because it's just supposed to be there. Right. So we shouldn't have to beg and ask and plead for people to add accessibility as a normal thing to everything that they build. But, you know, nobody asked me.
Yeah, I just wrote to the editor of Consumer Reports, so you're singing my song. So I think this is the printer that I have, and so I could always send along the model, but it does have four buttons. I believe so. Yeah. Yep. Thank you. Perfect.
Well, thank you, guys. Really appreciate it.
Looks like we got one last hand.
One more hand. Yeah. So Valerie is. Hey, Valerie.
Hey, Valerie.
Okay.
This is Valerie. Oh, there you go. Quick. I don't know if you answer questions about the Victor Reader Stream 2 or not, but I do have a question. Sometimes I have trouble searching for books because the. The thing locks up. I don't mean the stream. I mean the. The button you press for to search for a book that you're trying, you know, numeric or text. When you're trying to search for a book, it doesn't work. It's just go big ding and just, you know. So what I had to do was on. I had to delete a couple of braille books on the stream. You know, I had to delete a couple of books while I was deleting them anyway, and then it worked. So I don't know what happened. There, there. That's my question.
Yep. I don't have a answer. Chris or Liz, I know either one of you probably is a Victor more than I do. Do you have any suggestions? It sounds like maybe storage could be full, but I'm not sure.
I don't use one, so I can't be helpful.
I'm sorry.
I don't either. I can't be helpful. I'm so sorry.
Maybe could. I wonder if she could email the show and you could.
Yeah. Send an email. We can do some research and find out if anyone.
I don't know how to do email yet.
Gotcha.
I'm getting computer training and I haven't been trained with it yet.
Well, we can look around and try and find some. And if you come back next week or next time we do a show, we'll try to have the answer for you.
All right.
And thank you very much. We're going to go ahead and wrap it up. I see we have about two minutes. So, Marty, you want to go ahead and thank Holly Bell and wrap it up?
You just did. But thank you again, Holly and Bill. We appreciate all of your help so much. For everybody else, thanks for being here. If you want to reach out to us, you can reach us at Feedback Mute show with any questions, comments, or anything else. You can check out our website for any other information, which is unmute, show and everyone. Have a great weekend and we'll see you next time.