In today's Community Unmuted, Marty and I advise you that we are putting the Tuesday Community Unmuted on hiatus through the end of the year. Right now, we've got a couple of exciting things happening and we need to focus on building the value for our club members so we can make sure they're getting the content they paid for. We do want to continue producing content on Tuesdays in the QA format, so stay tuned for more information about that. And of course, club members are going to get access to it. First Unmute show to give yourself or gift a club membership.
This has been an ACB community call.
Today's special Community Unmuted was hosted on Saturday, November 2, 2020.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Unmute on a Saturday. This is new for all of us, but we're trying something different. We were getting a lot of people asking if we are ever going to be on with a weekend when it's not during the week, in the middle of the day when people go to school and work. So here we are, we're giving a try and see how this works out. So anyway, welcome everyone. We're going to take first questions and the answer to the tech question of the day. And if we have time, then we will take second questions. So if you have tech questions, you can go ahead and raise your hands. Also, please be respectful and let everyone get their question answered with the same respect that you would want. And always remember, there's no dumb questions. The question of the day today is if you were to buy someone something for the holidays, a tech gift, what was it that you would buy for someone as a tech gift for the holidays? And always back and with us, we have Michael Doyce. How you doing, Michael Doyce?
Great, Marty. It's good to be here. I would have to say to the answer to that question, and I think a lot of people would agree with this, the AirPod Pros too, because there's so many things you could do with them, the hearing aid features and all those things. So that I think that is a. I mean, it's an expensive gift, but it is a wonderful gift for everybody for what you could do with them. So I'll hand it back to you, Marty.
All right, thanks, Michael. And as we have a new participant helping out with us, and with us is going to be Liz moving forward. So, Liz, how's it going? How are you?
Hello. I'm doing fine. And my answer to the question is a battery charger with at least one type of cable connected, preferably a USB C cable, but they also have chargers that have multiple connecting cables connected to them so that if you grab the charger, you don't need an extra cable.
Cool.
Sounds good. Thanks, Liz. And as always, we have Michael Babcock with us. How you doing, Michael?
As always, you sound kind of like bored that I'm here. You know what, I'm just going to be muted this whole time, Marty. And you can do everything on your own.
Well, I'll just go on mute. We'll do this a call as a muted call instead of an unmuted call.
Yeah, yeah. Instead of it being unmute, it'll be muted. Sounds like a. So for me, number one, I'll go through. We don't have a lot of content that like we normally publish on the Tuesday call. Tuesday calls. But yesterday we shared Jaws tips Forms mode explained how the differences between auto oh, I can't talk auto, semi auto and manual forms mode. I demonstrate that in the audio. Now, my tech gift comes from what we shared on Digital Bites. So if you listened to Digital Bites on Sunday, then you know what I'm going to say and goes along with what we were kind of talking about at the beginning of the call. And that is barbecue. So for me it is the meter M E A T E R smart meat thermometer, specifically the 2 Plus. And the reason I suggest that is it can support environments up to a thousand degrees. So if you're air frying food, you can throw the meter in and and be able to cook either in your 500 degree temperature or up to a thousand degrees. But more importantly, in my opinion, it has a very tactile line that you need to put into the meat as far as that line is. And then you can recharge the device easily and it will last for hours and hours. I've used it when I've smoked meat. I miss that. And don't tell my wife, but we will be getting a smoker again in the future. She really wants to get one and I keep pushing it down the road. Before we get into the hands though, I believe Marty, unless you want me to talk about it, has something to tell people about a slight change for unmute.
That is true. And the slight change is going to be we for the moment are not going to be doing the Tuesday calls anymore. We're going to continue with this Saturday call once a month, the first Saturday of the month and see how that goes. But we are going to go on hiatus on Tuesdays. So there is that. One other thing is we are also Doing an unmute community tech gift guide. So if that's something that you feel like you want to participate in, you can find out all the details about that on our website, which is Unmute show. And if you have questions, comments, or anything else, you can always email us at Feedback Mute Show Sheila, who's the.
Single hand we have right now. And if you're listening, raise your hand and. Hey, Ann.
Hi.
Can you hear me? Yes, ma'am.
Good.
I don't understand. Are they going to have audio description for the election?
I couldn't figure that out.
Yes, ma'am. They certainly are going to have audio description for the coverage of the election on Tuesday. I think that's Tuesday. I don't know. Can I just. Can I just turn mine on? Or how does that work? So it is my understanding and someone else might have additional details that if you have the audio description feature on. On the stre streaming platform that you are using, then it will automatically work if you're using. Wait a minute.
Not screen, not streaming. I don't understand.
I have it on my tv. So. Anna, I was just getting there. If you're using cable or over the air inner tv, whether that be an antenna or cable services, then you'll need to go in and enable the secondary audio programming or SAP channel, which is what you typically have to do in order to get audio description on shows passed over cable or the antenna. What if you don't know how to do that? Then you'll need to figure out how to do that. So I would reach out to your cable company provider and ask them how to do that. But if you don't know how to do it, then you'll have to figure out how to do it before Tuesday. I can't just use the regular audio description. Then what if you have reg. If you have audio description already working with your cable or streaming? Well, you're not streaming, so with your cable provider, then that audio description should come through on the elections.
Oh, okay.
That's what I was after. Yep. Perfect. Thank you, Anne. Have a great day. Belle, do we have anybody in Clubhouse?
Jane.
Hey, Jane. You jumped over the Clubhouse and left us in Zoom. I did, Right?
I guess that way.
I'm looking for accessible battery testers or.
You know those chargers that have the springs for the AAA and AA batteries? Yes, they're still around. I don't. Do they even have accessible such things as chargers that charge these AAA and aa. I don't know.
Batteries?
I have the. I don't know. Are there any accessible ones?
So are you looking for a charger or a battery tester? Because that's two different things Chris suggested on Sunday. The Go ahead. Michael, I thought you had something Chris suggested on Sunday. The power owl AAA battery charger. You can check that out if you search for battery charger on Unmute show or go look at last Sunday's episode. There used to be a product and it may still be made. And I can check into this for you unless Liz or Marty know or Michael knows that would test your batteries and you would put one end of the battery on the device itself and then there was like a short inch long cable that you would touch the metal part to the top or to the battery the other end and it would stand vertically on it and then it would beep up to like four tones to tell you how much battery is left in that. I don't know if they're still being produced. Chris, I mean, Marty, Liz or Michael, do any of you know?
I do not know, but that sounds like a fun maker project for somebody to create, you know, There you go.
That's what I say. Michael, looks like you're having a maker project weekend.
Oh, I don't have the skills to do that.
No, no. I'd throw Doug under the bus for that. So hopefully that helps a little bit. Liz, if you are. Or not Liz, but Jane, if you are looking though for just a battery charger, I would take a look at that OWL battery charger that Chris recommended on Sunday. She does a really good description of it and hopefully that'll help a little bit for you. And that charges with USB C. And.
Doesn'T that OWL charger do AA and aaa from what I remember, it's really neat because it fits both sizes in each compartment. Yeah, it's really cool.
All right, awesome.
Right, you ready?
We're ready.
All right, somebody with an iPhone has your hand raised. Can you please unmute and tell us who you are?
This is Rahil.
Yeah, Rahil.
Hey. So I don't know how I got signed out of Zoom. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, but now it changed to iPhone. That's crazy. But anyway, I looking for, like, ways to access audio description. Since I don't have a TV provider or a TV for the election, is there a way I could access it?
I don't have that answer for you. Does anyone else?
You could check any of the major networks and see if they have a way to go through a web, you know, the web browser on your phone to see if they're doing it that way at all. I'm not sure what other options you'd have.
CBS apparently, is the network that I know of that is doing audio description for election coverage. And there may be a way. I don't know if it's for free, but there may be a way through their website and or app to take advantage of that.
Does Alexa would. What would she play that or no?
So she'll play npr and I guarantee NPR is going to have coverage of it.
Okay.
And I'm sure CNN as well and others that you could play on those devices will. And you probably will get better coverage and not need as much audio description because they have to do commentary on those sources. Right. So kind of like listening to a sports radio show. You're going to get a lot of description through the commentary. Of course, you'll get a lot of, you know, opinionated comments and things because it's commentary. Right. But it might be even better through those sources than just on TV because you are just getting the audio.
The potential caveat to that though, is if you are listening through your smart speaker to a TV broadcast like CNN or MSNBC or whatever you might want to be listening to, because a lot of times those are TV broadcasts, they may not be as descriptive as if it were a radio broadcast like npr.
Okay, thank you.
Hey, Petra.
Hey Petra.
I'm a little disappointed about that the weekly show on Tuesday not being on. But that's just me. I love you guys and I love these shows. And my answer to your question, if I could buy the attack gift, I think I would buy them a pair of the meta glasses. I have a pair and I've already made my deposit on the echo vision glasses as well. But this, this is a really very helpful and hands free. And I use them quite often. Not as often as I could, but I use them quite a bit. So that's my answer to your question. And with the charger you're talking about, you're saying owl like owl like the bird.
Yes ma'am, that is correct. And if you go to unmute show, you can type in battery charger or go listen to Sunday's episode and it's called the power Owl owl. And you can get it on Amazon for once. I actually put links in the show notes to help people get to where they need to go. So that should be helpful and we appreciate your feedback. As we all know, we live in a very dynamic world. Things can change. And just because the Tuesday show is currently gone does not mean it will forever be gone. So I'll just leave it at that.
And Petra, I actually have a question for you. Petra, I have a question for you. I want to know what the Meta glass is. What about them makes your life easier with them opposed to without them?
Well, I'm kind of a dinosaur when it comes to reading things. An Opticon user. I was an Opticon teacher and the meta glasses make it a lot easier for me not to have to get my Opticon out to look at the mail that comes to have the glasses say, this is a mortgage offer from Discover Banker.
You know, just mail that we all.
Love so much in AT&T or the other day I, you know, bought some stuff at the store and I have a wonderful app called Digitize that reads barcodes and QR codes, but you have to locate the barcode on the can or the container. And I couldn't find it with the Digitize app on my phone. So I got the Meta glasses and they told me what was in the can and they just work really well. I know I'm not using them as much as some people do and I'm not getting as much value from them as some people do. And that's why I think that I would be really happy to buy them for someone that might need them and use them more than I do. I think they're really very helpful and I'm glad to have them until my EchoVision glasses appear.
Cool. Well, thanks, Petra. We appreciate it.
Deborah Armstrong. Hello, Deborah.
Hey, Deborah.
Hi. Okay, so my question is about voiceover navigation style. And at one point I accidentally said a to group and everything was very weird. So I set it back to flat. What purpose does group serve and when.
Should I use it? Ooh, I want to take this one. Because I use group all the time. I no longer use flat navigation anymore. So what group will do well is it will allow voiceover to be smart and allow you to quickly skip past things. So specifically when I'm looking at my messages, instead of having to flick through all of the messages to get to the bottom of the screen or use a four finger tap at the bottom of the screen, when you have group enabled, you can flick to the right three times and that gets you to the edit field because it groups all of your messages into its own group. But if you want to get into those messages, you simply use a two finger and flick to the right on the message group and then you're interacting with that group and you're limited to the boundaries of that specific. That's actually a Lie. It kind of is hit and miss. Sometimes you are limited to the boundaries of that group. Other times it will take you out of that group to the next group. And another reason that I use this is there's an app that has three or four navigation buttons at the very top of the screen. But whenever I load a new page in that app, my focus is always put at the top of that screen. So I'll just two finger flick to the left once to get out of that group and then flick to the right once and I skip past all of the navigation buttons at the top of the screen.
Now when you say, Michael, that you do a two finger double tap to get into something.
No, two finger flicks.
Oh, two finger flick.
Gotcha.
Okay. Okay, gotcha.
So I guess the problem I was having with it was I didn't understand how it worked.
Yeah.
So the two finger flicks are like telling it you want to interact with.
Something or are they telling it you.
Don'T want to interact with something?
So flicking to the left will, are you familiar with navigation on the Mac by chance?
I am.
Okay, so control option, shift up arrow is the same as two finger flick to the left. So that stops interacting. Control option shift down arrow is the same as two finger flick to the right and that starts interaction subsequently. I do believe those gestures work on.
A trackpad on a MacBook, I believe they do. And that's the best way to describe it is it turns on interaction on iPhone or iOS. This is a lot like NVDA's object navigation too.
I'm not as familiar with that, but it sounds like it is. It's one of those. I told someone once, I say, give it a week. Now that you understand what the concept of it is, give it a week. And what you can always do is add navigation to your rotor and then you can flick down and switch between flat and grouped. If for some reason you're just like, I don't understand what's going on. But give it a week or so. And I think it might help with being able to navigate iOS a little bit faster as well.
Well, I'm going to go on mute.
And do it right now.
Thank you so much.
Sounds good. Appreciate it.
Gregory.
Hey, Gregory.
Hey, guys. How are you?
Good, good. How are yourself?
I use the meta glasses and I've already ordered a pair for Christmas for my little brother which has been diagnosed with glaucoma. So I gave him a pair of metas. I think he'll really love them. I got a question. Have you guys Used the seeing AI video feature yet.
It is amazing that all the demos I've heard have been amazing, but I have not played with it myself yet. Have you, Gregory?
Yeah. I videotaped my partner taking all the Halloween decorations down in the front yard. And it was really, it was kind of amazing what it was doing. So it was pretty cool. I do have a question. Do you guys know how to initiate call recording on an iPhone 14 Pro?
Yes, sir. How do I do it? So if you start a call or someone calls you before, after the phone is done ringing. So you cannot initiate it while the phone is ringing because both parties have to be aware of the recorded. So the call has to be answered. And how I discovered this is I called my cable provider and their system likes to talk and talk and talk. So I just called them and just did a sample recording. The very first button in the in call screen should be call record or record call, I believe, or call recording. If you don't see it, you might want to try hiding the keyboard. But it should be the top left corner. And once it you hit that button, it'll beep three times, I believe three or four times. And then it will tell you and the person that you're on the phone with this call is being recorded and then it will beep. When you're done with the call, you just two finger double tap to end the call like you normally would. And then you'll get a banner notification that comes across the bottom of your status bar that tells you that the call recording has been added to notes. And then if you double tap on that, it'll open your notes with the call recording and you can either play it or read the transcript. And the transcript's pretty darn accurate as well.
Did you swipe to find that record button?
I did. I swiped to the left.
Okay, thanks guys. This Saturday, recordings or calls will work a lot better for me instead of Tuesday.
So also I want to point out, you can also explore by touch and find the keyboard does have to be hidden and it's at the very, it's the top object at the very top left on the screen without the keyboard. So if you just explore by touch, start at the top left and go down, you should be able to find it there as well.
Okay, thank you.
We don't have any hands.
I told you guys to come up with some questions, so hopefully you guys came up with some questions. No. No. Okay, well, Petra just raised her hands.
I didn't want to come in with my second question until everyone Had a chance. But my question just now came up in that answer. How do you hide the keyboard?
There's going to be a.
If someone calls me, does the keyboard come up?
There's going to be. It. Well, yeah, but there's a button on the. If you're holding your phone in vertical mode on the bottom right side that says hide, you do a single finger double tap on that and it will hide the keyboard and then bring up the other options that you have when you use the phone, like know call switching. So if you want to bring in a third person into the call or if you want to mute your microphone or any of those features and if you need the keyboard again, then there is a button there that says keyboard and then you can do a single finger double tap on that and it will bring the keyboard back up when you are.
Go ahead.
Sure. I was just going to add a little bit more information that might be helpful. When you are on a phone call and you have your keypad up, the hide button, if you find your 0 in the bottom middle and flick with one finger once to the right, that or explore by touch slightly to the right from the zero, that is where that button lives on your screen.
Fantastic.
Wow.
I learned so much from you guys that. Yeah, I'm your maybe one of your biggest fans. Thank you so much.
Stay subscribed to the podcast because you'll still be learning. So appreciate, appreciate your support. Petra. You've been amazing and well, everyone's amazing and I really appreciate everything you're. You're sharing with people and the questions you bring. Sheila, do we have any other hands? You do. I apologize. I think you said your name was Rahul, but I'm not sure. So.
IPhone Raheel. Raheel.
Okay, thank you.
I was wondering when I was logging into the IBUG meeting yesterday for the virtual movie night and tonight I'm going to be doing this again for the melodies and memories at like 9pm Eastern, 8pm Central. How do I log into Zoom again? Because on my app, on my phone's app because it says the token has expired or something like that.
Well, so there's actually a way that you go into a browser and you log into your Zoom account and make sure that you set your name to whatever it is that you want in there. Once you do that, it saves your information in the cloud and then when you go to your local Zoom, whether it's on your computer or your phone or any of your devices, you log in with those credentials and then your name is going to be already brought in from the cloud instead of just only the device. So if you have a device like an iPhone and you do not log in that way, it'll just be iPhone because that's what your iPhone is named. That's all it recognizes it by. But if you log in with your credentials that you use for your cloud login, it'll bring your name down into your device or whatever your device that you log into with your credentials.
But it says some kind of token expired, which I don't understand.
That sounds like you signed in and something has caused your account to sign out. So you just need to go back into the Zoom app app. And then I think there's a area it says like join, meeting or all these other options. And so one of those options should be just sign back in.
Okay, thank you.
I agree.
Alta?
Yeah. Going back to the. The keypad, I've been having trouble, you know, trying to find known I swipe. You usually swipe and hear a button, the number or the end call. It will not. I can't double tap it will not like I swipe. It'll say again call. I double tap it will not do it. This has happened in the last couple updates. I don't.
I wonder if that is the. An issue that we ran into not too long ago with trying to merge. Whoa. Merge calls because. So what you're saying, Gregory, is double tapping on the button isn't doing anything for you.
Yeah, because I swipe down, you know, and you hear, listen to 1, 2, 3, 4 and you swipe down. It's a call. You double tap. It just. It goes beep beep. But it don't do nothing. I can't hang up unless I feel.
Around and find it and then split tap on it. Right. Or can you double tap if you feel around and then double tap on it?
Yes, but I can't swipe through.
So this is one of these reasons why I always tell people when you use your iOS device or any touch based device, swiping is great. But I think people sometimes rely on the swipe from previous to next or next to previous. Sometimes it's. It is very useful especially for troubleshooting to kind of learn the placement of things and use that explore by touch. Because if problems happen, you know, you can find the object with your finger, move to that. And sometimes guys, you can move your finger to something if you know where it is in relation to other things and be able to say again muscle memory. Yes. And just kind of learn kind of like when you use, you know, there's a lot of people don't think about this, but there's a direct correlation between technology and O and M. And so if you could learn the placement of things compared to others and be able to quickly move between those without having to swipe from. You know, imagine if you had to swipe from a or, or Q on the keyboard to return to get every letter right. We don't do that. We kind of have to use that explore by touch on the keyboard. So doing that in your iPhone, apps and things like that also really helps, you know, learning where things are and being able to quickly move to things if they do change it slightly.
I don't know why I didn't put this together because when I use a keyboard, I use muscle memory. I'm very good at it. But I couldn't. I mean, I didn't think of a swiping the keyword.
So another thing to think about, Gregory, that I don't use it as much on the phone, but I do use it on the Mac all the time, is if you two finger, triple tap. So you use two fingers and tap on the screen three times. This brings up your item chooser and sometimes that might be easier to find specific elements on the screen either by using the search or flicking through the list of items there. And then you can double tap on that and that'll move your focus to that specific section in the application and then you can either double tap again and focus has moved there. So there's a lot of different tools that will help you in addition to flicking.
Okay, thanks guys.
No problems. No hands, no hands, no hands. Okay, perfect. Well, Michael D. Do you have any interesting content that you have published lately or an app that you've published lately?
So I'm working on several things. We have a new website called beyond the Gallery and what this is is a website where you can find shortcuts. For the Shortcuts app, you can get inspiration or submit your own, which is very exciting. And I'm sure I'm going to get some interesting questions on this, but we're starting a contest over at Iaccessibility because we want people to submit apps and do several things like that. And so I'll be posting the rules for it soon, but I guess I'm going to say it here first, but we're going to do a 60 day contest and on New Year's we're going to give away some meta Ray Bans.
So stay tuned to Iaccessibility because there will be More details coming about that.
Yep. On Mastodon and all the places, so stay tuned for that. It's very exciting kind of going through these two months, but beyond the gallery, I accessibility and we're going to be having some really exciting new AI content coming up pretty soon.
Raheel, looks like you are next.
Yep.
Yeah. I did sign into my Zoom account finally and everything went very well. I've been having some issues with Planet Fitness, which is the gym. I go to the app, which is why I have to turn on screen recognition and I use the app and it still puts the refer a friend at the top up, but I can't find a button that says person to go into my thing where I need to schedule the class or access my attendance history or anything like that. How would I go about reporting this to Planet Fitness? It's hard to. It's hard to get a phone number and stuff and it's hard to. I spoke to the managers who's like, oh, I'm sorry, yada yada, you know, I apologize. They don't really know about accessibility and they don't even know all that stuff. And I have to sometimes swap down four fingers. I don't know what that does.
I wanted to mention a few things. Sometimes in their app there might be a contact or on their website, a way to contact. But if all else fails and I, as a developer and oftentimes others, I'm sure forget about this. You can write a review on the App Store and developers can respond to those reviews and it's not the immediate solution to your issue, but it does provide awareness and you could put a rating and a review and they can contact you and start that discussion. If you cannot find their information, of course, always, you know, on.
I've tried that and I haven't. I haven't been successful with writing a review and I couldn't, I could not submit that.
What function are you looking for from the app to get into the fitness app. So what. What is it that you're looking. You just want your workout data or how many steps or what are you looking for?
So I have to go into my person area and it says schedule class or. And also it says get attend. Checking history or attendance or whatever. Sometimes I need that for to get like paid back from a company that I'm. That I'm with, you know, so.
So it's not ideal, but there was an article back in 2021 that I'm reading where ACB, Planet Fitness and Paralyzed Veterans, I believe, are the three organizations that came together to advocate for more accessible equipment in the gym, which is not specifically what you're asking for, but there, there is a slogan that Planet Fitment Fitness goes by, which is a judgment free zone. And in order for them to maintain that, in a lot of cases, I hesitate to say this for a minute, but in a lot of cases, sometimes you just need to get social about it. So if you're having issues with the app, go to their Facebook page. Planet Fitness has a Facebook page and a marketing team. And if you're not getting responses from the developers, start leaving feedback on their page or start sending them messages or start giving your opinions about the experience that you, as a completely blind or as a low vision consumer are experiencing when using their application and tag their social media in it. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, because I've seen that that helps a lot of times because it goes out to everyone and everyone sees it. And that is a reflection on the experience you, as a consumer who should have access to all of the features and apps that any other consumer has, can leverage to make a difference. So at this point would, if I was in your shoes, and I can't tell you exactly what to do, obviously, but if I was in your shoes, I would start implementing social media responses.
Type in Planet Fitness on Facebook.
Yep, type in Planet Fitness on Facebook. And that'll bring you up to the Planet Fitness Facebook page and start, start making some noise up there.
Okay. Because I don't know, like what to say because they're not going to know what, what screen recognition is. They're not.
I'll tell you what, they're going to learn real fast if they start getting lots of comments about, well, why isn't your app accessible to blind users? And no, they may not know what screen recognition is at the Facebook team or on their marketing team, but their app developers can research what screen recognition is. I don't develop apps, but I'll look at Michael. I'm sure there's some documentation about it.
There definitely is. But my recommendation is start simple.
Yep.
Start simple by saying, this is not accept this does not provide the accessibility required to use this app on my phone. Is there anybody on your team that can speak to me about making improvements? And then, you know, you can start bringing in the more complicated, you know, I have to use screen recognition and all these other things to get things done.
And do I have to leave my phone number?
I would not leave your phone number on Facebook because that could get a little wonky and who knows what will Happen. But start that dialogue. Get that communication going. Also, check out the fitness website and see if there's a contact us form. Drop a message through the contact us form as well.
Right. Instead of, like, for them to speak with me, though, like, don't. I need.
They can message you.
Okay.
Yep.
Okay.
There's Facebook Messenger.
They.
You can. They can reach out privately. They could send a private message on Facebook and then you could trade emails and still not have to give out your phone number.
Okay, thank you.
Gregory.
Hey, I'm going to take advantage of this while I can, guys.
Go for it.
Have any of you guys or anybody you know is able to use. Been using Be My Eyes with meta? Are they having good success? You know, because I can't wait. That's the main thing I'm waiting for is Be My Eyes being put on them glasses.
I think, I think if people are able to use the meta Ray Bans right now with Be My Eyes, they wouldn't be able to talk about it. And I think that's why we haven't heard a lot of news about it.
All right. Okay. Yeah, but I'm, I'm really gonna, you know, I can't wait for that to happen because the AI is not that great yet on them glasses. It's getting better, though. I'm having success.
Getting AI is great, but it just depends on how you prompt it. And that's the same with everything. For example, I was playing around with iOS 18.2 yesterday and the beta one, and it can do some extremely crazy, awesome things. I was having it read comic books on my iPad and I would have to say, describe this image exactly, or else it wouldn't work. And then I'd have to say, read the text. Any deviation from that would not work at all. But whenever I did. Oh, it was reading and it was describing the characters that the speech bubbles were coming from. It was amazing. But it comes down. If I said anything slightly different, it wouldn't work. And that's the same with the meta AI. If you say, like, you know, certain things, like, give me a detailed description, blah, blah, blah, or say, you know, to read something a certain way, it does a great job, but if you don't give it those prompts the right way, it kind of goes off and does its own thing. So it's a fantastic tool, but it's learning the ways to make it fantastic.
Michael Joyce, could you just, for those who maybe don't know or don't understand, just give a tiny primer on what prompting is and how that works.
Sure.
So prompting is, you know, when you type on your computer, if we get autocorrect, and it recommends how it thinks you want to finish that sentence. And prompting is basically the same thing. It's how do you put in, how do you say something to an artificial intelligence to get your expected output? I could say, write me a song, and then it's going to be very creative and it doesn't exactly know what I want a song about. But if you say something to the extent of write me a country song, where all of the typical country song things happen, and I just don't want to go into all of that here, or write a rock song, you know, or write us write a love song where, you know, the two people break up and get back together, or, you know, things like that. The more detail you give, the more detail you get back, the more it can say, okay, based on what you've asked me, this is what I think you're wanting back.
I have noticed with the metas, I use another pair of smart glasses. I'm still using them, the Celeste glass. And I've given the same prompts with the meta glasses that I've had success with. And it will, for instance, guide me down the sidewalk, you know, so. But it's not as good, but it is getting better. So, you know, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll get better.
Yeah. And there are also what are called system prompts. So, for example, be my AI has a system prompt that is geared towards us as a population. Whereas, like ChatGPT's image description may not have the same prompt. And so when we look at, you know, Celeste compared to Meta and. Or compared to arx, they all have different prompts. So when you ask your question, you're asking your question on top of what the glasses have already been given as a default prompt. So that's why some of these AIs do better than others, because out of the box, they may be programmed to work better towards people that are blind and visually impaired.
And I listen to a lot of AI podcasts because AI is an ever evolving arena. It can be different tomorrow from what it is currently today. And I think the best piece of advice that I had heard is give when prompting your AI, whether that be meta Ray Bans, whether that be Google's Gemini almost caught up, barred again, whether that be chatgpt, give the AI a role and provide it parameters where possible. So an example might be you could say, write me a podcast transcript based on this, or write me a podcast show description based on this transcript, which a lot of the content at Unmute show is AI generated. Because honestly, I don't got time to go write show notes for every show. But we're producing the content in the means that is the easiest for us, and that's audio. I can talk all day long and like it or not, that's just how it tends to go. But if I can take that audio and get a transcript out of it, I can then take that transcript and say, hey, in the style that we have done, here's an example of the style that we've used. I need you to be a marketing expert who is confident in search engine optimization and use this transcript to generate me a show notes for this episode that is keyword rich. Also provide me the list of keywords that you're targeting for this specific episode. And as you see, that's a lot more detailed than just make me a podcast description based on this transcript. And therefore I'm going to get better results out of the AI. And that's how crafting your prompt can make a huge difference in the experience you receive while using AI. So hopefully that helps you there. Gregory. I am not seeing any other hand, so it's a pretty quiet group here. So I'm going to ask Marty if he could please answer the question of the day. Maybe. Maybe he walked away to get a breakfast.
You did ask him whether he answers or not.
I know, good point.
Just, you know, mission accomplished.
I would say that my answer to the question of the day would be I would buy someone cables for their products. So if you have like USB C products like iPhone or iPad, where everything's getting updated, and at this point you can have your AirPods and your phone and your iPad all on USB C. So USB C cables that are nice, that are braided and you can never have enough of them, have one at home, have one in your backpack or in your go bag. So that would be something that I would get that someone could really get a lot of use out of.
You know what, Marty? That actually brought me to think about something that at guys should do this. At guys should make a big bag of charge bricks that they sell, because we don't get charged bricks in our device boxes anymore. So it would be neat if like they sold or somebody sold a big box or a bunch of USB C charge bricks. Because that's the one thing people always say, I don't have enough charge bricks now.
I don't, you know, so we do have a 30 watt dual USB a and USB C charge brick. And I think one of those thrown in someone's stocking wouldn't be a bad idea thing. You get best of both worlds definitely.
So there are never enough of those bricks to go around. I mean they're just great, you know, to always have them in your backpack or whatever. And a nice braided cable is always a good thing.
Braided cables the best.
They definitely are for sure. And it's funny. So I'm going to go back to a topic that we were talking about a couple minutes ago because I'm not seeing any hands here. So if you have questions, feel free to raise your hand. But Planet Fitness came up and I find this to be very interesting. They have an accessibility link on their website and I'm like, oh, let's click this and be able to get some information. When you click their accessibility link, it appears to not do anything. So there might be some more conversations that need to be had with Planet Fitness in relation to accessibility and the opportunities that are available with them. Not to pick on them, but that happens. Michael, you mentioned you've been playing with the AI features in iOS 18.1 and 18.2. Michael's probably never going to join us again because we keep picking on him. But my question is, what are some of the AI features that you're really enjoying? Because for me on macOS it's the summary I'm really liking. Summarizing emails, it can be questionable at times. I get what some people are saying, but definitely that's probably one of my favorite features.
You know, in 181 I was hoping a lot for the writing tools and I guess because it's so hidden I never think about using them and I think that's one area where they could improve is the writing tools. But I do use the summaries all the time and in 18.2 what really has me excited and there's been a lot of posts from me and Lauren Bradford on Mastodon about this and that is image playgrounds. Being able to create your own images and just seeing what kind of off the wall zany things you could come up with in there. But I think one of the most exciting things is this visual intelligence and that's only on the iPhone 16 models. But I can hold down the camera control button and it will allow me to send the an image of whatever the camera is showing to ChatGPT and get a very detailed description of what I'm seeing. And it is. And then you could ask follow up questions. So it's very similar to be my AI. And I'm really excited about that and I hope they offer an on device version of that as well where you don't have to use ChatGPT. But it's very exciting to see what we're getting built into our phones and they have the image search and all of those things. But like I was talking about earlier, I can have my phone on any screen and say, describe this image just to Siri and it will send it over to ChatGPT and bring up whatever you know, it will describe whatever it sees. And then I could ask follow up questions again. The only thing I think they need to work on is the interruption because if you interrupt it, it all goes away and all of your hard work on all of your conversation is gone. And it's like, oh man, I gotta start over.
So if you interrupt Siri, that happens?
Yes.
Okay, so you know how to fix that, right?
You could. I think you could turn off interruption, correct?
Yes, you can. Under accessibility, if you go down to Siri, under general, you can say require. Hey, Siri. Or Siri to interrupt Siri while talking.
Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah, I need to change that.
Yeah, that might help you with that a little bit. That's. So you. Your AI experience in iOS then in this specific scenario is initiated and completed inside of the Siri interface. Then it's not a separate app Correct.
For doing those things. It is just initiated in Siri. Now the camera control is done through that button on the 1616 lineup. So you don't get the visual intelligence on iPhones older than the 16 or the iPad, unfortunately. But you do get that on any iPhone 16 models. So going forward, that will be a very nice resource.
And when you say visual intelligence, Michael, what do you mean by that?
So that's a feature that Apple introduced at WWDC and or at the iPhone event this year. Not, not at wwdc. I had that wrong. But it is, it was introduced at the iPhone event that when you hold down the camera control button, it can bring up. They call it visual intelligence. And it lets you kind of do the things you do on Samsung or Google phones where you can take a picture of images and do an image search. You can ask about the what you're looking at through the camera and get ChatGPT to give you more information about what you're looking at, similar to my AI. So that is visual intelligence. Now, very quick, it takes about two to three seconds to come back with a response.
And when you invoke Siri now on, I think it's 18.1 and it's got to be on the 16. Do you see the color thing that it does? Have you been able to see?
Yes. And that is on the 15 Pro and 16 model. So you get the new Siri. Anything that has Apple intelligence, and that's.
Just like a look thing that just to make it look cooler kind of a thing. I mean, the lighting, it kind of.
Lets you know you have the new Siri experience.
Gotcha.
There's also a new sound, I believe, with that as well.
Yeah, I hate to interrupt you.
You got 10 minutes. And Rich has got his hand raised. Okay, Rich.
Hey, Rich.
Got a real quick question for you. I'm just curious what you guys knew about the Smart Vision 3 phones and also if AT guys was going to start selling it soon. AT guys will not be selling the Smart Vision 3 phone. I used one for a couple of months. If you're interested in hearing from the manufacturer, you can type in smartvision in the search field. At Unmute show, I used one for a couple of months. Personally, I found the interface to be a little clunky to navigate. That's not saying anything bad about the device. I just found their UI to be a little bit clunky to navigate. I did like having the ability to reach up and touch my screen, especially in apps that were not designed for vertical navigation. So there. There are some apps out there that it's easier to just touch the tab across the bottom of the screen, as Michael was saying, to orientate yourself to it and then double tap on it. So I will say that I did enjoy the flexibility of it. I think it's a little slower than I would like, but that does come from using Samsung and Google devices. So for a person who needs big buttons, who wants the flexibility of using an Android phone but still have physical buttons and a touchscreen, it might be worth exploring. I have not seen the community built around the Smart Vision as there has been a community built around Blind Shell. Not that they are direct competitors, but I think that's important to be aware of as well, because where is the community support going to come from with a new device? Okay, thank you very much. No worries, Gregory.
Okay, one last time, guys. I've been dabbling with the Envision Ally app and is it. It's just going to be developed eventually or are they trying to learn how to be a personal assistant? Is that what their main goal is with this app?
It is my understanding that invision with the Ally app is intending on being able to provide you one or multiple smart assistants that can be multimodal, which means it can take input from text, voice or images and be available across platforms. So on the web or via your Envision glasses or an iPhone or an Android. So, yes, I do believe that that's really what the goal is with it. It's really interesting and it's very fast. It's a lot faster than I thought it was going to be. So if you haven't gotten in there, definitely check out how to join the Envision Ally beta. I don't think I'm on an NDA with it. I don't think I signed anything. So I will say it's really cool because you can say look and describe this to me and it takes a photo instantly and then we'll. We'll provide that information and you can interrupt it while it's talking as well.
Yeah, I've used. I'm using iOS and I've downloaded a link to my PC. I haven't tried it yet.
Ah, it's interesting. Yeah. Thanks, Gregory.
Thanks for all the opportunity to ask multiple questions.
No worries. Appreciate it. I think we've got time for, maybe for one more hand. Who do we got next there, Sheila Raheem. Hello, Rahil.
Hey. So, okay, I got my new iPhone. I like it. But a friend of mine from New York, somewhere in New York East Chester. I don't want to reveal the name of the person he keeps bringing up to me that I should have the blind shell and all that, either as a music player or a regular foe. And I keep telling him, no, I'm not going to get a blind shell because it's a waste of my time. And then he would be like, oh, you just wasted my time because I showed you how to use it. Any advice on how to get. How to. How to not do that? Because he, he keeps telling me to get a. Get the blind shell from either at guys or, or whatever, you know, and.
Here'S some what I would say. At the end of the day, you got to do whatever is the most comfortable for you and what makes your life easier. Other people may have a different opinion and they're free to go and do whatever works the best for them. But if your friend, person, whoever it is, is liking to use the blind shell better and that helps him in his universe and you like iPhone and that does what you needed to do and helps you in your universe better, then stick with what you know and stick with what works for you. And anyone else can stick with what they know and what works for them. And that's it. I mean, not everyone is going to always agree on everything. You got to just stick with what works for yourself.
And. And the blind shell is obviously. I know it's like 530something dollars, but why is it they got to make it so the COVID can come off when you want it to actually come off? Instead of playing with it and trying to break it. The back cover for the battery or anything, if you need to take it.
Off, I mean, it comes off pretty easily. Yes. In the beginning, it is difficult to pull it off because they have it sealed there. So that way you can't just easily pop it off. But really, if you put your fingernail in the little gap that's available on the bottom right hand corner, you can pull the back straight off. Yes. It's gonna. It's gonna be a little difficult to pull off because they don't want it to just slide right off, because then what's the point of having it back there? I think it's one of those. Once you get comfortable with doing it, it should be easier for you to. For you to navigate and to use.
Right. And then. Because sometimes I have short nails and it's difficult sometimes.
Yep. Raheel, if you aren't aware of it, you can go to unmute show. And there's a search that says find episode if you type in shell phone. So two words, shell phone, you'll be able to pull up about 55 different episodes that myself and Adrian have put together that walk you through doing different tasks on the blind shell. Classic two. Typically, they're under 10 minutes long, and that might help you with making an informed decision as to if you want to use the blind shell. As Marty was saying, figure out what works best for you. And what works best for you may not be the best thing for your friends.
Yeah, because. Because, like, you can't use Delta fly Delta app or anything like that.
No. But you can use delta.com so really comes down to what it is you need out of a device.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Raheel. Looks like we are clear on hand. So I'm going to hand it over to Marty. He's going to thank Liz. Oh, wait, I shouldn't let him. Or tell him what to do and then wrap it up. Go ahead, Marty.
Thanks, Michael. Michael Doyce, thanks as always for being here. And Liz, thanks for being here. We had a lot of fun today. And everyone else, we will see you the first Saturday of December and check out the website. If you have any questions, you can see what we got going on there, which is unmute show as well as our email, which is feedbackmute show. If you have questions, comments or anything else, you can reach out to us there. And that is it. Everybody have a great week and thank you, Sheila and Belle, for streaming and doing all the things that you guys do to help us out. We so much appreciate you. Everyone. Have a great week and we'll see you guys next month.