Have you caught the travel bug? Don't worry, I have too. I'm Katie, a travel agent who specializes in accessible travel. If you love to talk, all things vacations, with a little fun along the way, you should head on over to Katie talks Travel, a podcast on unmute presents.
This has been an ACB community call's Unmute presents.
Community call was hosted on 6 February 2024.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another unmute. Here at the top, we got some announcements for you. We also wanted to remind everyone we're going to take all firsthand first. So all first questions. And if we get through everyone, then we can take second questions if time permits. Also, please be respectful and let everyone get the same respect you would want for your question. And remember, there's no dumb questions. Also, I wanted to let everybody know that we have club unmute, which just started, and we had our first one yesterday, which went great. And the Reaper class, if that's something you're interested, is going to be starting in two weeks. So for all that information and everything else we got going on, you can check out unmute show. And as always, I've got Michael Doyce with us. Hey, Michael, how's it going? Great, Marty.
Thanks for having me again. And we've had some fantastic shows. We've had new episodes of Spanish with Carla on the Iacast network. She's been talking about different food and different things like that. So check those out. We just published a new episode, episode twelve, and we've got more on the way. Obviously, we have the radio station, new content there. We even have AI doing some intros and things. So that's pretty. So we're continuously updating and changing things. So we haven't had a lot of podcasts this week, but I know that Michael and you guys for unmute have. So I'll hand it back to you, Marty.
All right, thanks, Michael. And if you guys have tech questions, you can go ahead and raise your hands. And in the meantime, we also have Michael Babcock with us. How you doing, Michael? I am doing great.
For anyone who is curious, you're hearing me on a MacBook Air microphone because apparently I'm having a loopback issue. So bear with me while I work through this, and I'll have to remember to mute in the right place. Michael did a IA cast on last Wednesday that was published, talking a bit about bits. So if you're interested in hearing Jeff and Michael sit down, have a conversation about what bits is and how some of the places we've gotten with bits has kind of gotten there. You'll want to give that a listen. It's a real good chat. And then on Thursday, we published a new show. If you are someone who is interested in Braille, we've partnered with Chris Cook and we are publishing Braille content. She is coming to you to talk about different braille displays. And not only Braille displays, but for the inaugural episode, she had a conversation with someone who learned Braille a little while ago in Canada. And it's interesting to hear how things are different, but yet the same over the years when it comes to learning Braille. Really interesting conversation that's going to come to you on the first Thursday of the month. And then we also, with Chris, started a new Sunday show. So we are going to, at this point, cut back on the teach you something on Sunday shows and really Sunday, start publishing more mobile content. So there's a new show that we shared the preview of called Digital Bytes, and that's by T-E-S. That comes out on Sundays now with Marty, Chris and myself. Yesterday we shared technically working, and technically working is a show where Damasi and I sit down on a weekly basis. And really now it's kind of evolved into us catching up with each other because we don't talk as much as we used to. And so we've been chatting about his experiences with using technology and some of the challenges and ways he's worked around those challenges as a new trainee, as a blind license manager in the state of Alabama. So that's a pretty interesting discussion if you are interested in that. And lastly, Michael published the Spanish with Carla episode where they talked my favorite food. I'm sorry, my favorite thing, food. And so if you're interested in hearing more about foods and articles, check that out.
That's all I got for you, Marty. All right, and thank you, Michael. The question of the day today is saving things you find on the Internet, links, articles, stuff like that. Do you use an app for it? Do you just save it to your favorites? How do you do it? What, do you use a third party app? Or how do you go about doing that? If you have any info on that and how you do it, let us know. That would be cool. And Kate, let's get some hands going.
We do. First up is anissio. Go ahead, please. Anicio.
Thank you, Katie.
Good afternoon. First of all, thank you so much for all the wonderful service you guys do without unmute and everything else you're involved in. My question is regarding the blind shell. I have a client that whose blind shell recently just stopped working. We don't know why, but whatever. So we're getting it fixed. But the problem is that she had lots and lots of contacts and we were not able to retrieve them. And I'm wondering in the future if there's a way to, instead of when you save contacts, is that a possibility of saving them into a memory card, the micro SD card that the blind shell accepts?
That's a great question, and unfortunately, no. The only way that you can save those contacts is if you either do the full backup of the phone from the service menu or do the export contacts from the contacts menu. You guys are working on getting it replaced right now or repaired?
Yes. Initially when she called me, I thought that because this happened to another consumer of mine, I thought she had inadvertently turned off the output speech. And then obviously. So I had the demo version that I tried to, I just replicated with the numbers, but it didn't work. And then her screen too was totally blank. So I don't know what happened there.
Yeah, unfortunately, unless she had a backup of the contacts, she's going to have to reenter all of those. What I tell people is, if this happens to you, it is very unfortunate, but once you get your contacts back in there, before you do anything else, go make a backup. That way you don't have to start from scratch next time and you at least have a starting point if it happens again in the future.
What's the best way to do that? To do the backup?
Yes, if you go down to from the main menu, there's an option that says export contacts, and you can choose that and make sure you have a micro SD card in the phone. If you do not, it will make an export file of the contacts to the root directory of the blind shell's internal memory, and then you can copy that file to a computer if putting a micro SD card isn't feasible for a little while.
Great. Thanks, Michael. Thank you so much.
No worries.
Thanks a lot.
Next we have Jane. Go ahead, please. Jane.
Hey, Jane.
NVDA question for. Oh, my. NVDA sometimes stops. Like, I can't relaunch it for some reason. I have tried installing it. I'm trying to uninstall it and reinstall that again. I don't know how to do that. I'll figure it out somehow. But yeah, when I do my shortcut, nothing works. And also with Loopek, I learned very important yesterday. Turn your virtual devices on first.
And.
Then try and look for those virtual devices. Otherwise it will not show up. But yeah. How do you uninstall and reinstall NPDA?
So that's a good thing, Jane. I'm going to actually go check to see if loopback disabled my virtual device, because none of them are showing up in macOS right now. They're all gone, but they're there. That's the worst part. Anyways, so if you go to add remove programs, can you remove NVDA there or have you tried that?
I did. I can't find NVDA in that list, but I know.
Did you install a mobile version of NVDA by chance? Portable version?
Do you know?
No, because I went to the project nvda.org and I got the actual exe for.
So when you download that and you install it, there's a couple of options when you first install. One of the options is to install portable copy of NVDA. So it's the same installer. And I wonder if for some reason you're not able to find it and add remove programs if maybe you inadvertently had installed a portable copy of it. So I would try downloading that again and then going through the full install and trying to see if that works. That's the only other suggestion I have.
With that at this point.
Oh, I'm going to join club of mute. Are the classes I'd like. Reaper. I need to learn it. Are they going to be recorded somehow?
Yes, the classes will be recorded our first Monday of the week. I'm sorry? First Monday? Two Mondays in a week. That sounds like a nightmare. Our first Monday of the month. Calls are not recorded, but the classes that we do teach will be recorded.
Thanks a lot, Jane.
Next we have Beth. Go ahead, please.
Beth.
Hey, Beth.
How are you?
Okay. Hi. Yeah, I have a question first. My speech was talking, so I didn't really hear about the teaching you're going to teach. You mean these classes you're still going to put on the podcast, right?
Yep.
You will not. Ooh, so much better. Thank you, Jane. You are amazing. Quick side note, if your virtual devices disappear, then go turn them back on, Beth. You will not lose any current content that you receive. We will not stop these Tuesday calls. We are not going to stop with the podcast. We've actually been talking about bringing more free podcasts out. The club is an opportunity for us to do some more teaching for people, though. That's more direct. And if you want more information, go to unmute show and you can read about it there.
Okay?
Okay. I wondered about my Perkins brailler. I don't know a lot of times I have these wrinkles, like my paper. I think it doesn't feel wrinkled when I put it in, but then it gets wrinkled in there. So I'm thinking it probably has to be cleaned now. I don't know. I'll probably have to ask Valene Shaw and Braille again how I can get the tools to, because it seems like, I heard you can clean it yourself. But I don't know, they might even.
Have tools that you can get that will clean it that are specifically for cleaning it.
It's so cheap to send it to Perkins. Send it to Perkins. You love them. They'll treat it well. You deserve to have a good mechanic working on your cheap.
It's worth, it's worth reaching out to someone to get that fixed for you, Beth, instead of doing yourself if you don't have that experience. And as Elizabeth had stated, it is worth reaching out to Perkins to see if they can get you in to get that fixed.
I can give you the contact because you'll never get him on the phone. So if you get community@acb.org to reach me or brl@earthlink.net which is my facilitator email, I will be thrilled to send that along. They're lovely and charming. Oh, thank you. So what's your name?
Elizabeth.
Yes.
Thanks, Elizabeth. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Yeah. People ask me if my real name is Elizabeth, but no, it's just it. I got it.
All right. Well, thanks a lot, Beth. I appreciate that.
Thank you, Elizabeth, for that.
Yeah. Thank you. And what about saving, how can you save a link? My phone automatically saves my searches. But you talked about the question of the day. I don't think I've ever saved links.
So if you're on your phone and you have safari open to a web page that you want to save, then you would go down to the bottom where the toolbar is and you would hit the share sheet. And then once the share sheet opens up, you'll see a whole bunch of options. You can either text it, you can email it. There's other apps that are listed in there that you could send it to if they have the capability of being able to save a link. You can do all kinds of different things. So I would check that out. So you have the web page open. You go down to the bottom toolbar, you go to share, open that up, and then you'll see all your options there to do what you want with it.
Right. And on the computer the same way. Or maybe I could copy and paste.
Exactly. You can copy and paste. There are tools that you can save on your computer as well. You just have to figure out which one would work for you for what you're looking for. Okay, sounds good. All right.
Okay, thanks.
Yes, no problem.
Next we have phone number 70. Three ending in eight, 80. Who are you, please?
Hello, what's your name? Hi, this is Matt. Matt. How are you doing, Matt? Doing good, thank you. I have a question. I have never used an apple laptop. I have a Dell laptop that I got for about $600 years ago, and I'm wondering if I want. But I can't stand antivirus on my computer, and it's super slow. If I got a MacBook, could I get it for about the same or a few hundred dollars more and I could read my windows files on it and have better antivirus? Well, first of all, the answer to the first question is yes, you could. Depending on the machine that you wanted to get, what are you going to be doing with it? Just browsing the web and email and basic things like that. That and creating files, spreadsheets, documentation files, that sort of thing. Well, currently and doing my taxes currently at this time, they still do have the m one MacBook Air, which is the first generation of the M processors, which are ridiculously powerful. If you're just doing basic stuff, browsing the web, listening to music, email, all that kind of stuff, then that machine would be great for you. That machine, you can find it on sale, like at Costco or sometimes at the Apple store. You would just have to look around, but it runs between $801,000. If you wanted to up the configuration, you could out of the box. If you don't do anything to it, it's 256 on the hard drive, 256 gigs, and you get eight gigs of ram. And that's still a pretty awesome machine. But if you need more power, you can bump up the hard drive, you can go up to 512 or 1, you can put the ram up to 16 gigs if you want to do that. So that would be a great machine for all day to day basic stuff, and then some. After that, you can go to the m two MacBook Air, which is a little bit more. Those start around 1100 to 1200, and then depending on the configuration you get, they go up from there. And then, of course, after that, you go into the MacBook Pros, which are somewhat more money. So there are options to get in at around $1,000, possibly a little bit less, depending on what you're looking for. And yes, you can do all that stuff if you don't use Microsoft Office 365. You can open your documents in pages, which is the word processor that they have installed on there for free. That's equivalent to Microsoft Word. Or you can turn your word documents into PDF and you can view them that way if you want to. Or you can also get 365 and install it on there. If you have a 365 account with pages and Apple Microsoft Office equivalents, I can open my Microsoft files on the MacBook. Yes. You should be able to open them without an issue. And the app you would use that comes on there is called pages. And then you've got numbers and keynote, which is like Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Those are Apple's versions of it. It comes pre installed on the machine and you don't have to pay for it. Oh, great. Okay. That's my question. Thank you very much. Yep, no problem. Good luck to you. All right, thanks.
Elizabeth, you are up.
Hey, Elizabeth.
Yeah, hi. And repeating Perkins is a great resource. So just call Perkins and get Jose and get his email. And he communicates via email about your brailler. The question I have is, I have got the ACB app on my phone and I.
There's an ACB link. Elizabeth, is that.
Yeah, ACB link, right. And I notice in the podcast listing that there's a certain number of this podcast I'm interested in. And then there's a lot of them listed that I don't really care anything about. But there doesn't seem to be any way of deleting them the way I would in Apple podcasts, where I would triple tap and bring up the context menu and delete it or whatever.
Or.
Flick down and delete it, depending on how that is set up. You understand what saying and does that happen? ACB link?
You would be happy to know we actually have the developer who created ACB Link here, Mikey Goyce. Do you want to jump in on this question?
Sure.
I'll talk to this.
The ACB link app basically has a record of all podcasts that are in the directory for ACB. It is not a podcast catcher, so it doesn't have the ability to remove podcast episodes that you've already listened to and things like that. It's just a place for you to.
It would be easier if it could remove the links for stuff. I mean, the records for things I know I absolutely never will listen to, have never listened to, and don't care about because there's so much stuff in there that it would be easier to find the stuff I really want if I could get rid of some of the other stuff.
So, Elizabeth, the way to do that is to actually find the podcast and subscribe to them in an actual podcaster. The ACB link app is just to syndicate all of the information. It's not designed as a podcast app.
Which is what you're looking for. Yeah. That makes more sense now because I've subscribed to your podcast.
And you can delete them.
Yeah, I can. Absolutely. I don't, but I could. But my question, you're wonderful and you're a wealth of information. And what is it you're teaching?
Yes. So starting not in this coming Monday, but the following Monday, we're going to do a four part course on using Reaper, which is an audio editor for people who are interested in producing their own podcast. So if you're interested in creating your own podcast that's available, and as I said, you can get details at know.
Thank you. The NVDA question brings us to a question about whether people want to start doing teaching calls on ACB Zoom. Regarding NVDA and Jaws, I'm hearing rumblings about people interested in having someplace they could go to do that with people who could mentor them. So if there's people in the community that want to do that. Hi, folks. People want you to do.
Hall is coming. There will be jaws soon. So there'll be an announcement probably in the next couple of weeks.
I'm sorry, there will be what?
Jaws training coming soon. So stay tuned. In the next couple of weeks, there'll be an oh because they keep coming.
To me and I can't help them. Thank you.
Tell them to stay tuned to unmute. There's going to be an announcement in the next couple of weeks.
Very cool. Thank you.
Yep.
Who do we got next? Katie?
Pam, go ahead, please.
Hey, Pam.
Hello, several. Well, I have an answer to the question of the day, and then I have a couple of questions. The answer is I save links all the time. I mean, you would not believe my bookmarks. Multiple folders of bookmarks depending on what I'm saving. Some things get saved to notes.
Obviously.
Sometimes I need to share something as an email. I keep the various save functions hopping. Now, my questions, one of them, you mentioned something about your radio station a while ago. What is your radio station?
So I mentioned the Iacast radio. And basically what it is is we keep up with the week's content of all the podcasts on the radio station. So whether it's unmute, iacast, technically working spanish with Carla. All of the different podcasts we have on the network, and it plays on repeat all 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And you can go to IAcast. Net. Listen, it's in the I accessibility iOS app. And I think I'll have to work on the a lady skill that needs some work. But those two places are where you can get it. And I was thinking I was missing one, but those are the two main places right now.
And the app is I accessibility.
That's correct.
That's the name of the app.
That's correct.
Okay. Because I thought I had looked that one up and maybe I brought up the wrong search, the wrong one, because it didn't look like anything about it looked more like, oh, if you use a wheelchair and you need access to something. So I must have done something wrong.
Pam, if you shoot us an email to feedback at Unmute show, I can send you a direct link to it, if that would be helpful.
Well, I can try it again. I can look it up.
But.
But my other question was, and I was, of course, multitasking when you zip through this. But there was a guy in Alabama that was doing something, know, computer training or whatever, and I live in Alabama. I would like to read about him. So where was that?
Yeah, so what I was talking about is on technically working. It's where Demasi and I sit down and have a chat on a weekly basis about technology. And he is currently going through the blind license manager training to become a licensed manager there in Alabama. And he's been sharing some of his technology challenges and some of the ways that he's gotten around those and given some tips. So if you're interested in that search for technically working in your favorite podcast app, and you'll get that every Monday morning.
Thanks. I believe that takes care of it.
All right, Pam, thanks a lot. Have a great one.
Thanks for ahead, please, Brad.
Yes, we have on stage.
Well, the name says Lutrib official, so.
I believe you're muted.
Go ahead and unmute. Hey, everyone. Sorry, I don't know. Clubhouse won't let me change my name back to Turbo. I don't know why. Hello? We can hear you. Oh, okay. Yeah. I got two questions. One is for music production. I had a Mac in the past, but I gave it to my fiance so she can use it. I'm stuck between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, for logic Pro and for music production use. Yeah, that's my first one.
Okay, so is your question which one you should get?
Yeah, like which one is more affordable and stuff?
So the more affordable one is going to be the MacBook Air, it's going to do fairly okay for you. But I think if you're using tools like logic and other high intensive programs, and if it's in the budget, I would personally try to get a MacBook Pro at that point. But if you're looking for affordability, book air is going to do fine for you. I'm using an m two MacBook Air with eight gigs of ram. I don't do production, but I do do podcast production. I use Reaper as my digital audio workstation and this is working just fine for me. And I believe we paid 799 for it at Costco.
And I wanted to mention the MacBook Air M two.
I didn't know Reaper was on Mac. Cool.
I wanted to mention that the MacBook Air M two, it can do multi track. If you're doing five or ten audio production tracks in like Logic Pro or Reaper or anything like that, that MacBook Air is going to just breeze through it, even though it's the bottom of the line Mac.
That's my concern right there.
It will amaze you what it's capable of. And I put AA title game on the MacBook Air just to see, and I put the settings down to medium, and it was able to run it like it was Balder's gate three, which is a very high quality game, and it can run it and doing audio production, some not quite high level video production, the MacBook Air will do great. So I always tell people, you might need the MacBook Pro, but you may not. So see what your needs are if you're doing 32 tracks of audio production. Yeah. You're going to need that MacBook Pro.
Right.
Look at what your needs are, Michael.
On that MacBook Air, what are you using for Ram? 816. What do you got?
I do have 16 on there.
Okay. Wow. You can bump up the ram on it, usually the stock. If you don't upgrade the ram, it comes with eight, but you can bump it up to 16 or some of them have a little bit more, depending on if you get m one or m two. Yeah, I most likely might get. I'm waiting on the m three air to come out. I don't know when, but they're out. The MacBook Pros. We're probably going to get the MacBook Airs. My guess is sometime in the first half of this year, I would think. I would say maybe possibly June ish time around Mac world time. We'll see. Yeah. So I'm new to the unmute thing. I recently joined. I wasn't here from the beginning, so I missed a bunch. I got to go back and listen to the replay. You guys said that. Are you guys on Apple podcast, too? Because I use Apple for my. Yep.
Just search for unmute presents in your favorite podcast app. And we are on Apple podcasts.
Okay. Unmute presents. Okay. Or you can check out our website at Unmute show. Okay. And, like, for your microphones and stuff, do you guys use an audio interface or a soundboard? I'm using an audio interface, yeah.
We're both using the vocaster from focusrite. I'm on a.
Sure.
Beta 87 A. And Marty's on the sm seven B. Right, Marty?
Yes. That sounds good.
Okay.
That's nice.
All right, well, thanks a lot for your questions.
Thank you. Yeah, you too.
All right, next we have Lynn. Go ahead, please. Lynn.
Hey, Lynn. How you doing, Lyn?
You're muted.
Remember, you may need to get that ok button.
Sorry about that, guys.
No problem. There you go. We can hear you now.
New phone. Still trying to get used to it. So the answer to your question is that yes. Well, I worked for 29 years until 2020, right before the pandemic. And I used to go up online and I'd see something really cool and I'd say, yeah, I want to save that. So I saved a bunch of stuff over 29 years in different ways. And I even have some stuff off of old floppy desks from long time ago.
Wow.
So I'm a bit of a collector, so I'm going through it all now. And I used it depending on what I needed. I would use different programs and stuff like that. So it was all older stuff, newer. I'm a bit of a hoarder on digital content. Anyway, my question is very quick. With this new phone, I cannot remember how to install, how to pair.
What kind of phone are you on?
Oh, I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I'm sorry. An iPhone 15 plus.
Okay. And you're trying to. What are you trying to do?
I can't remember how to pair my Apple goodness aftershocks.
Do you know what model aftershocks you have?
No, I don't. I got them this past August. Does that help?
Perfect.
Well, it could be a different way where I would start by pairing them, by not knowing the model. This is where I would start to hopefully help you. So with your aftershocks powered off, if you press and hold the power button until they turn on and then continue holding for about 2 seconds, the shocks should say pairing. And when they say pairing, then you can go in and find the shocks in your phone and just double tap on them and then they should be connected for you.
I knew there was something I was forgetting. Okay thank you so much. I appreciate it.
No worries.
I hope you guys have a great day.
Yep, you too juliana.
Go ahead please. Hello.
Hello. How are.
My Microsoft? Well I have a very old Dell computer and my Microsoft is trying to hijack google Chrome. I guess I get emails and go into a link say the obituaries from Birmingham news and it says another window Microsoft Edge and it's doing this a lot and even zoom. Today I came into Zoom and it said something about Microsoft Edge. Well then I go into google and I check to make sure that I do the let's see insert t and it says google Chrome. So I just don't appreciate Microsoft interfering in my business.
I don't laugh at you Belle, I laugh at the frustration. So I will tell you where to go to change this and then I actually have your email here from when you emailed us yesterday so I'll email this to you as well. So for those who are listening and you're interested what you need to do is open the Outlook desktop application, go up to the file menu, go to options and then go to advanced. And then when you're in advanced you would scroll down. So what I would use is the tab key to tab through and locate the link handling option. When you find link handling you want to change the open hyperlinks from edge to chrome and then those links will open in Chrome versus Microsoft Edge it seems from what I have heard and I can't confirm this because I don't use Outlook myself but it seems like a change may have been made in a recent update because you're not the only one to get frustrated with this happening. So that's where you go is again to the file menu, go down to options advanced link handling and change that from hyperlinks getting opened in Edge to Chrome. And again I'll email this over to you bell.
Well a goal of mine is to actually I'd like to get a Macintosh but I just can't do that right now. But one goal I have is to go over to Chrome all just to get every just change. Now I know I'm old, I'm 70 years old but I'd like to change over to Google for everything, the documents and so on. What is that called? Docs. Google Docs.
Google Docs.
That's kind of a goal of mine and I may change the goal because I'm working on the iPhone also and doing things. And I went to Pam's iPhone class and it was really good. I enjoyed it and I'm going to go back and I apologize to all of you for the way that I sounded a few weeks ago. Three ABN has changed, three angels has changed, and I can still get into it, but it's hard to even find live now. So I've got to call the people at three ABN and say what is going on there? But I do apologize to all of you. I just got so frustrated.
Yes, technology can be frustrating. I completely get that, especially to Pam.
I apologize to you, Pam, and I'm going to be back with you now. I don't know whether I'm allowed to direct like that to somebody, but anyway, perfect.
Appreciate that. And I did just get that email sent over to you, Bell, so if you still have any other questions, feel free to reach out.
Okay, thanks.
No problem. Who do we got next there, Katie?
We got Joe. Go ahead, please. Joe.
Hey, Joe, how are you?
Good afternoon, everybody. So I had a quick question and then a have just to preface everything. I've updated everything and I have an Android phone. I am looking to find out whether or not BMI has new functionality, and I know they do, but I'm having trouble accessing it. So I know that they have something with Chat GPT and then I also know that they have done something where you can contact somebody who's like a friend, like a contact circle. I've gone on to my be my eyes app and it's just call agent or whatever and it's just that button. There's no other settings.
I can help you with this because I am having this problem on a new Android device I just picked up too. It's not you, you're not doing anything wrong. I think it's still rolling out to Android devices because I have seen it on it. Well, I've heard it on an Android device, but right now the groups feature and the Be my AI feature I think are still coming out to some Android devices. And so I would say though, it's frustrating. Give it another couple of weeks or so and it might be worth dropping an email to support@bemyes.com and verifying with them that you should be seeing it because I just tried it on the Samsung S 23 plus that I have here and it is not showing up either groups or be my AI in there right now.
Yeah, I think I have a Samsung S 22, so hopefully it'll be coming.
In the near future. Unfortunately, it's just one of those waiting games. You just got to wait for it.
I just thought I missed the ball. I was like, okay, did I miss something? Because I get emails from BMI's and I'm like, I kind of want to try this. But I also wanted to mention that the you, Michael, you have my email. I would love for you to send me an email once you guys start doing that reaper class, because I'm really interested in that. The other question I have is directed to you, Michael, is I've heard you're an educator and I am too. And I'm just recently just trying to get into online teaching, and I know there are certain platforms that certain online schools use. My question to you is, have you run into any extreme difficulties with any of these platforms?
Oh, yes.
In regards and screen readers, yes, I've.
Ran into some platforms where I can't do anything with them. That is something right now I'll be fully transparent. The tool that we're using for what we're doing with unmute is called memberful. Memberful. And memberful for the admin side of things seems to be fully accessible. I have not encountered anything as of right now that seems to be challenging. I do know that with WordPress you can build up your own learning management system which would let you put your own courses up. And when I'm done, I'll ask Michael Doyz if he can share any feedback about that because I know he has a little more experience with those than I do in accessibility. And then I have personally used, it's been several years, but thinkific. Thinkific and teachable. T-E-A-C-H-A-B-L-E both of them had some challenges at different points, but they were able to be navigated with some patience and creativity. But Michael D, what WordPress platforms have you tried for CMS?
So for learning management systems? Lms, the one that I've had a lot of success with is called learn Dash, and I'm building a courses platform with that, with what's called Learn cloud. It's about $30 a month. And basically they give you hosting for your own class materials. They give you a bunch of starter themes, even though I switch it back to generate press and other things like that. And you can configure your own courses at outlines. They have AI, everybody has AI. And you can just set up your own courses platform. It's a lot cheaper than thinkific, but thinkific does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Things like that, the design and things like that, they'll help you with that, but either way, you're going to look at having to build something like that. There are people that use udemy and places like that for teaching and putting their course materials out there. But learndash with WordPress is really a fantastic way to go if you want to have full control over the accessibility and usability of the platform, of the courses that you're going to be creating.
Yeah, the reason why I bring that up is because as a teacher, I'm trying to break into online teaching through different companies. And I know different companies use different platforms, and some of these might be some that they use, and then there might be others that use different ones. And before any of these people that I get interviewed by freak out because I use a screen reader, because there have been a couple that have, I want to be able to kind of reassure myself, as well as being able to reassure the person that's interviewing me that I will be able to navigate, or potentially navigate their platform successfully. So I wanted to know if there was any real big logs in the road.
Well, one of the things that you might want to do is get on social media, and if you're exploring a certain platform, ask around on social media if people have experience with that platform, because there's so many around, different employers may be looking at different platforms or using different platforms. So you may want to say, okay, what are they using? And then ask the question, is this accessible?
Thank you, guys.
Yeah, no problem. Good luck to you.
Thanks, Joe.
We have a phone number, four one three, ending in three two nine. Please unmute and tell us who you are.
My name is Laurie.
L-O-R-I.
I'm good. How are you, Mike?
This is Marty, but Mike's good, too.
Marty. How are you, Marty?
Good, thank you.
Good. I have a question. I have an SE 2020 iPhone, which is going on four years old. And actually, my first question is, when iOS 17 came out with its updates, I started having issues and problems, and one of them was a bunch of multilanguages came out on my screen, and I had to reselect English as my phone language, and then I had to sort of, like, do my iPhone from scratch. I had to do everything. Like, my phone was brand new, and it took me, I think, two months to get over that, to get over its quirks, and then with each subsequent update. Now my issue is voiceover keeps telling me the time every minute. So I asked Siri what to do about it, and she said, okay. I found this on the web. Check it out. So I read it and it said that a third party app is causing the problem. So what third party app would be doing that?
It could be any third party app. It depends on what you have on there. There's so many apps out there, it'd be hard to just guess automatically which one it would be. But I would honestly check in your settings first. If you go into your settings and then you go to, I don't think there's one specifically for the clock. I don't think you might be able to go to settings and go down to clock and see in the clock if you have something checked to say something every hour and you can uncheck that. No, I don't.
No, I don't.
Also, another thing could be where the voiceover cursor lands. So if your voiceover cursor is constantly landing on the clock, then every time the clock changes, it's going to announce something. So it would do that if the voiceover cursor is landed on any element that has information in either the app or the utility utility, meaning like the time at the top of your phone is going to always be up there. So if your voiceover cursor is up there all the time and you leave it there, it's going to say every time something changes. So in the clock, for example, every minute it's going to change and then it will announce something. But the same thing will happen with apps. So let's say that you have your app as the first app all the way in the top left corner, right on the home screen. Then your voiceover cursor is always going to land there first when you go to the home screen. And if the clock is there, it's going to announce the clock. So if you don't want it to do that, then you should put an app in its place that doesn't have something that changes all the time. You could put the date there, it'll say the date out loud, but it's not going to change every minute or every hour or anything like that. It's just going to say what the date is and then it will be done. After that, it's not going to continue.
Yeah, I used to have my calendar in the place of the clock, but I had my rehab teacher change it for me because I can't see my screen. So I asked him to put the calendar where the clock is and the clock where the calendar was, and so he did. And now I'm getting the clock announced every minute, all the time. Today it's pretty quiet. But watch, when I get off the call, it's going to start doing that.
If, say, like you're using your phone and you put your phone down on the table and you do not lock the screen, then the voiceover cursor is going to be on the clock app and it's going to announce that because every time it changes, voiceover is going to go, oh, there's new information. I'm supposed to read this out loud to you. So, for example, with the clock every minute it's going to change from twelve to twelve one and then to twelve two, and it's going to announce that every single time. So there's a couple of ways to solve that problem. Problem number one is the power button. You can just click it one time and make your phone go to black and then it won't do that anymore. Once your phone goes to the lock screen, it goes black. It won't do that anymore. It's only while you have the phone on the home screen. And the reason why it changes is because you probably have your lock screen or your home screen set to not turn off for a longer period of time than a minute. So every time the clock changes, it's going to announce it and then it's going to start over your screen from being able to go black because now your phone has done something. Voiceover is going to go, oh, the clock changed. Let me announce it. So you can either change that icon or you can manually click the home button so it makes the screen go black and then it will stop doing that.
You mean the power button? Marty, you said the power button will make the screen go black and you just said the home meant. I'm a little confused there.
The power button, if you click it one time, it should lock your screen and make your phone go black and then it will not continuously announce the time. Your phone will be a black screen until you pick up your phone again and do something with it. If you don't want to worry about that and you are tired of hearing and announce the time every minute, then just change that icon, move the clock over and put something else there. Like put your calendar app back there or something else that's not going to have information changing every minute. Like if you put the calendar app there, for example, it'll say the date, but then it won't change after that because the date is not going to change in 1 minute.
So it'll read you not until midnight the following morning.
Right. So then it's just going to allow your phone to go black on its own because it's not doing anything. Each time the clock does something, it resets the screen from going black, which then you're going to hear voiceover announce the time every minute. You can also change your screen to go less than a minute. If you have your screen lock at 25 seconds or something like that, less than a minute, then it will lock before it announces the time again.
When I set my screen to low power mode, it automatically locks. So my phone is locked. And then when I raise my phone to check the time or whatever, then it tells me to enter my passcode. And that's something I also noticed that my iPhone did not do. Now that I use a passcode, which I didn't use before, I'm required now to put in my passcode. Is that something that apple is making me do or is that something that the new update did?
Probably something the new update did. But you can go in and turn that off and have no password if you choose to do that.
Marty, it's ten minutes off.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks a lot. I appreciate your time.
Yeah. And also you can use the fingerprint sensor. The fingerprint sensor is on the home button in the bottom center on your phone. So if you set up the fingerprint sensor, you wouldn't have to put your passcode in. You just hold your finger on that bottom home button and it will scan your finger and then get you into your phone. So you can either turn it off.
Yeah, I did that. It won't take my fingerprint. It's not capable of face id.
You can go in and turn it off and just not have a password.
Okay. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.
Yeah, no problem.
And it looks like right now we don't have any other. I do. I promised on Mastodon I would share this. So I'm going to share a tool that I learned about today that I think is going to excite a lot of people, at least those of you who like to cook and keep track of recipes. So recently I heard of a new tool, and it's called cooked C-O-O-K-E-D wiki. And what cooked Wiki lets you do is it lets you pull in all of your recipes that you have and then it gives you a consistent format for those recipes, which is great, and that's all exciting and that's fun. But more importantly, what it does is if you have a link to a recipe. So I get a lot of recipes from hellofresh. We used to pay for their service, but I now get a lot of my recipes from their blog. If you go to a recipe and it doesn't really matter as long as it is not behind a paywall, you can go to the address bar. And at the very beginning of the address bar, write or paste in cooked wiki. So that's C-O-O-K-E-D wiki wiki. And then it'll have the rest of the URL or the rest of the web page in there. And if you hit enter to go there, then what the cooked wiki website will do is it sucks in all that data from that website for the recipe and it organizes it for you. And then you can go back and see that recipe, most importantly without none of the ads. So you don't have to worry about ads interrupting your navigation experience. And it also will break out ingredients from the recipe for you so you can go get those separate. And lastly, they offer some text to speech options so you can have the service read the recipe instructions to you while you're cooking. And again, that's cooked C-O-O-K-E-D wiki. I'm going to do some more in depth exploration of this and share that with members as well. So this is a pretty exciting tool that I am glad to see. Oh, and I just discovered earlier today that you can use this tool and drop it a video of a recipe and it supposed to extract that information from the video. I have not tested that, but if that works, that right there is worth the free price tag on top of what it already does. So hooked C-O-O-K-E-D wiki. And from what I have observed, all of the buttons and fields seem to be labeled and it's a very simple interface to navigate. So that was my quick tip. I see we have one hand here. Let's jump over and take Beth real quick and then we'll wrap it.
Okay. Yeah, yeah. I had a question. You get a recipe from a website and then put it in. Can you do it on the computer as well? On the windows?
Yes.
So what you do is you browse to the website with the recipe on it. You go to the address bar with control l or alt d, whatever way you get to the address bar, you press the home key to go to the beginning and you type in cooked wiki and you hit enter and it will automatically add that recipe to your cooked wiki account. You have to be signed in, but that's a way you can get that in there. Or of course you can always copy and paste the recipe if you'd prefer.
To do that as right and to cook that wiki.
Yes, ma'am.
Yeah. And also a Facebook. Do you know what less than three means when somebody's commenting and they say less than?
It's a heart they're trying to make. A heart is what they're trying to do.
Thank you, Mark, because I did not know what that was.
They're trying to use two things to make like a picture of a heart, basically, is what they're trying to do.
Oh, perfect.
All right, we are out of time, everyone. I want to remind everyone really quick before we go, if you have an iPhone and you need extra help with your iPhone or you've got questions, check out Pam Coffee's class, which is on Saturdays. I'm not exactly sure the exact date or time, but you can check with her through the community. You can also check the community email that goes out every morning to check that out. So look for Pam's iPhone class on Saturdays if you want some extra help with your iPhone. She does some great tips and tricks and answers your questions. Also, thanks everyone for coming to another unmute. Check out unmute show for all things unmute and the reaper class that's happening and club unmute and everything else we have going on. Thanks to Kate and Brad for all your help every week. We appreciate it. You guys are awesome as always, everybody have a great week and we'll talk to you guys soon. Thank you. Our.