mastodon 4.7.2+glitchMembership Engagement Specialist at the American Council of the Blind. Co-host of Technically Working, a podcast about tech and accessibility. Affiliate
volunteer, and general thorn in the side of inaccessible software. I spend my time making things work better for blind and low vision folks through audio,
assistive tech, and getting the details right. Based in Oregon. Runs on coffee and curiosity.
#Accessibility #A11y #AssistiveTechnology #ScreenReader #Blindness #Podcast
What to try in this build
Earshot Plus is live for testing: Monthly ($2.99), Yearly ($19.99), Lifetime ($49.99), plus a tip jar. Free tier includes 10 podcast subscriptions; Plus removes the limit. You can also change plans after subscribing — try it.
TestFlight purchases are FREE and fake — you will never be charged. Test subscriptions renew on a fast clock and expire after a few renewals on their own; that's TestFlight, not a bug. Nothing carries over to the App Store release.
Feedback we'd love:
Also in this build: two crash fixes from the Swift 6 rebuild (Lock Screen artwork, feed date parsing), faster VoiceOver navigation on the paywall, and a thank-you for supporters in Settings.
Requires iOS 18 or later. Devices on iOS 17 won't be offered this update.
Send feedback through TestFlight or the usual channels. Thank you for testing!
A week went by and nothing changed. No new build, no little box appearing next to something, no toggle behaving differently than the day before. After months of small surprises, the quiet felt almost loud.
She didn't know the whole thing had been taken apart and rebuilt underneath, every moving piece now made to answer to one strict foreman who won't let two of them grab the same wire at once. She'd have no word for it. She just knew the app stopped doing two small things it used to do.
Locking her phone mid-episode with the artwork up used to, once in a while, drop the whole thing. Rare enough she never caught it happening, just noticed the silence and reached to restart. That stopped.
The other she'd never have named. Now and then a show's episodes came in scrambled, last week's stacked on this week's, and she'd sort it in her head without thinking. A crack older than her whole time with the app, finally sealed.
And one thing was new, the only new thing all week: a quiet line down in the settings, a way to actually pay for it. Renata's nephew built this, and she'd been running on his work free for most of a year, which sat wrong with a woman who has never let a debt go unpaid.
She didn't tell Renata. She found the button and settled it. Earshot Podcasts https://testflight.apple.com/join/u8dj5UTr
I use AI to help me write. Specifically Claude, made by Anthropic. The thoughts are mine. The opinions are mine. The experiences, the bad takes on smart locks, the feelings about a 114-day Todoist streak dying on a Monday I still can’t account for, all of that is mine. What AI helps me do is find the shape of what I’m trying to say faster than I’d find it on my own. It’s a drafting tool. I review everything, rewrite what doesn’t sound like me, and don’t publish anything I don’t stand behind. I think about it a lot like how I use a screen reader. A screen reader doesn’t read for me. It gives me access to the content so I can do the reading. AI doesn’t think for me. It gives me a starting point so I can do the writing. The tool just makes the access part easier. https://open.substack.com/pub/payown/p/hey-im-michael-heres-what-this-is?r=3gvkww&utm_medium=ios
This is the first time this experience has ever happened to me. Was at a brunch with family, and a family member came up and told me that his podcast app started playing #TechnicallyWorking, he hadn’t listened in the past, but really liked what he heard and was shocked to hear my voice. #Win #FunFact.
I’m playing with NVDA more, and I installed an extension for Outlook, but not sure where to observe any changes it made. Any person know how to make NVDA be less verbose? I’m sure it’s just a setting… For example, when arrowing through my messages in my inbox, I hear unread associated draft external, and then the name of the person who sent the message. Switching from Outlook is not an option, switching to Outlook New is an option.
RE: https://mastodon.online/@JeffBishop/116297158277983851
I do! I do! I also hear I’m pretty good at it too… Oh, I mean! This is exciting…
Episode 157 of Technically Working is out. This Is Fine, Everything Is Fine.
@damashe@technically.social used the Blindshell Classic 3 as his real work phone. The dual SIM is broken, there is no company name field in contacts, and apps access your microphone without asking. He still doesn't think it's a terrible phone. Go figure.
technicallyworking.show #TechnicallyWorking #BlindTech #Accessibility https://pnc.st/s/technically-working/e519280c/this-is-fine-everything-is-fine
Episode 157 of Technically Working drops tomorrow. This Is Fine, Everything Is Fine. That's the title. That's also a pretty accurate description of the week we're both having. technicallyworking.show #TechnicallyWorking #Podcast
TW157: @damashe@technically.social field tests the Blindshell Classic 3 as a real work phone and reports back honestly. I burned through my entire OpenAI budget before Sunday. Everything is fine. Episode 157 drops Monday for all however is out now for Tip Jar Supporters. technicallyworking.show #TechnicallyWorking #Accessibility #BlindTech
https://technicallyworking.show/
Technically Working Episode 155: dropps Monday for all, and in an hour or less for tip Jar supporters! I spent 30 minutes playing a maze game on a $15,000 Cadence braille tablet at CSUN. Priorities. Also covered: the Shure Beta 87A, accessible LG appliances, and why the bot came back with an attitude. technicallyworking.show #TechnicallyWorking @tw@technically.social
What to test:
Play an episode and let it run past a minute and a half without touching anything. It should keep going, no crash, even with a large library.
Let an episode finish on its own with nothing queued behind it. The Now Playing bar should disappear, and VoiceOver should say "Episode finished."
Pause an episode. The bar should stay put so you can start it again.
With VoiceOver on, flick through a screen. The Now Playing group should read last, just above the tabs, not first.
After updating, confirm your subscriptions, inbox, queue, and resume points are all still there.
The show would get about a minute and a half in and just die. Not pause, not stumble. Gone, screen and all, like someone reached over and shut it off. She follows more shows than she'll admit to, and that turned out to be the reason, though she'd never have connected the two.
The last two builds handed her back small things that worked, and she couldn't use any of them past ninety seconds. She'd started timing it without meaning to. Pull out of a client's drive, get a sentence into the host, brace for the drop.
This build lets her forget she was counting. She pulls out, the host starts, and a minute and a half comes and goes with nothing under it but the road.
The other thing she only caught with the phone in her pocket and the earbuds in. When a show ends on its own now, a small voice says episode finished, and the dead little bar that used to sit there afterward is just gone. Pause instead and the bar waits, the way it should. She'd never have asked for either one. She just stopped reaching to check whether it was really over. Earshot Podcasts https://testflight.apple.com/join/u8dj5UTr
