A Few Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What program/site do you use for your blog?

A: I use the Blogger.com site to maintain my blog. I have found it extremely easy to use and very accessible using the JAWS screenreader. There are some who use Wordpress, but I personally prefer Blogger. You can create your own blog through Blogger by visiting Blogger.com and creating a profile. It’s simple and intuitive, and if you have any problems feel free to write to me and I’ll try to help.

Q: Can I take quotations from your blog with citation?

A: Certainly. I don’t mind people sharing the information I present on my blog; just give me credit where credit is due, please.

Q: Are you interested in guest blogging or having a guest blogger?

A: I am always interested in writing as a guest writer or having someone submit a post as a guest writer on my blog. To guest write on my blog, one needs to follow some simple guidelines: 1) Use proper spelling and grammar. I hate when an article is full of errors; 2) Be neutral. If you discuss something related to one organization or company, include information about the other organizations or companies or mention alternatives. For example, if you write a guest post about an IOS app, please also include whether it is available on Android and, if so, where; 3) Write on anything related to low or high technology for the blind. It has to be on-topic. If you’d like to guest write for my blog, feel free to write to me at herekittykat2 AT gmail.com and write a brief explanation of what you want to write about.

Q: How long have you been blogging and how do you know how to design a blog?

A: This is my first and only blog. I started it as a way to tell my friends about technology that I had learned about, and it has quickly grown to writing for the blind population in general. I have had several stops and start-ups, but I hope to write often and consistently now. As for layout, I often google HTML basics and learn how to write in HTML to make my blog easier to navigate via screenreader. I have learned so far how to make headings, paragraphs, links, lists, and pictures. I hope to learn in the future how to insert Youtube videos, insert audio clips, and how to include a Facebook widget on my blog. I am constanly in the process of learning new HTML tricks and I use them in making my blog easier and more friendly to blind and visually impaired visitors, while making sure it looks nice visually as well. The major advice I can offer on this subject is to never stop learning…keep looking up new ways to add to your blog and make it more fun and creative.

Birding by Ear

Becoming intensively popular among the blind, birding by ear entails listening to and identifying the songs and cries of the birds all around a person. Many sighted people go birdwatching, but they recognize birds by plumage and flight patterns and often don’t even try to identify the sounds the birds make. Birding by ear is a hobby that anyone can do, sighted or blind, and is, in my opinion, lots of fun!

While visiting my Cajun family in Louisiana, I decided to check out what birds were in the area and learn their songs. Turning on my iPhone, I went to the iBird app and searched for birds in Louisiana, whose habitat was urban, lakes or ponds, or swamps and marshes, all close to the environment where my aunt lives. Adding the “frequent backyard feeder” option, I narrowed the choices down to twenty-nine birds. Some were simple, such as the blue jay and the Northern mockingbird, both of which we have in North Carolina. Others were new, such as the evening grosbeak and the American kestrel. For each bird, there was a description of what they look like, where they live, and their flight patterns and nesting habits. However, what I was really interested in was the “Speakers” tab, which brings up a recording of the bird’s song or cry. I listened to about half of the birds listed as search results, then went for an evening walk with my aunt and my boyfriend. Along the walk, I was able to point out the songs of many birds. My aunt was quite impressed, saying I recognized many more birds then she knew there were in her area. It was a very enjoyable walk as they quickly picked up on the sounds I pointed out to them, and we heard a few that we looked up later.

The iBird app is a great tool for sighted and blind birders alike. It is available for both IOS and Android phones, and has different costs depending on the app you purchase. For example, there is an iBird Lite that you can try for free, but the iBird Yard Plus, which has almost a thousand bird species, costs $9.99 (for Android) and the iBird Pro version is $19.99 in iTunes. This app was recommended by Scientific American magazine in 2012 and voted by IOS users as the best birding app.

Don’t have a smart phone? No problem! Go to the iBird website, where you can do much of the same things as in the app. Search for birds in your area, birds of a particular size or color, or just browse the many birds. Each bird page has an overview of the bird, description of its plumage, flight patterns, and nesting habits, pictures of the bird, and my favourite part, a recording of the bird’s songs. It also has convservation notes that I haven’t found on the app, describing its status and why it has that status. For example, the Acadian flycatcher is of “least concern” because it has a wide range and a large population.

Birding by ear has become a favourite activity of mine, and I hope I have inspired you to give it a try and try out iBird as well! Happy birding!

Treasure Chest for the Blind is now on Facebook!

Hi to my regulars and new readers alike! I have just created a page for the blog on Facebook. You'll notice that the url is in the same format as my blog's. That is, instead of treasurechestfortheblind, it's blindtreasurechest. I felt this would make it easier for followers of my blog to find the facebook page, as I'm sure you are used to the formatting of my blog's URL by now, right? Anyway, I plan on using the page for a few different things. The main focus will be sending out updated information about the blog (new posts, updated information, etc.), however, discussion topics will be brought up, especially on topics that I'm researching for upcoming posts. You can still send questions, comments, or suggestions to me through my e-mail, but now you can also comment on the Facebook page or send me a message through it.

I hope to have a Facebook widget up soon. I'm having a little trouble figuring that out. If anyone knows how to do it, please contact me. I could use the help

What am I up to lately? I am preparing for a trip to Louisiana and starting a travel diary for a research project being done at Louisiana State University. The trip is going to be from May 30 to June 16. My internet access will be limited between the 30th and the 10th because I'll be in rural Louisiana and my family doesn't have internat access at home. After that, I'll have access again, because I'll be in Ruston. That's in northern Louisiana, and is home to two places I plan on visiting. First is Louisiana Tech University, the school I want to transfer to to finish my Undergraduate studies and do my Graduate studies. SEcond is the Louisiana Center for the Blind. I'm seriously considering taking a break from college to brush up on my blindness techniques, such as Braille, orientation and mobility, cooking, housecleaning, and a general sense of self-confidence. I think I really need to work on these and the LCB would be a good place to do that. I'm also playing a lot of Second Life lately, using the Radegast viewer. I'll post more information about that later, but if you're curious, here's a link to the Radegast main page. From there, you can download the viewer. You'll need a Second Life account, though, so if you don't have one....well, I'm sorry, you'll just have to wait until I write the post!

Until later,

Jewel

Correction and Update for blindy TV

After talking to someone from blindy TV, I would like to make a correction and an update about this service.

First, I would like to correct my error in suggesting that people contact blindy TV if they want to see more variability or a particular show added to the channels. Blindy TV works with what is available and the only way they can add more content is if more content is made available. To that point, I want to stress that if you want more variability of shows or a particular show added to blindy TV, contact the producers of the show(s) and work with them to have audio description added to their show(s).

Second, I want to update everyone on how best to listen to the blindy TV channels. In my original post, I recommended iBlink Radio, but pointed out the dropped connections and buffer trouble. If you use a dedicated radio app to listen to blindy TV, the dropped connections and buffer troubles are a think of the past. One such dedicated radio app is TuneIn Radio. Use the search function to find blindy TV and add it to your favourites for easy navigation. I tested this app and listened to blindy TV with it over the course of the last few days, and I did not experience a single dropped connection and there was no buffer problems.

My thanks goes out to the people at blindy TV for pointing out the error about contacting them (though you can certainly contact them to suggest new features or discuss any problems), and for telling me about the dedicated radio apps that make listening to blindy TV a much better experience!

Meteor Vibrating Pocket Watch

Have you ever been in a meeting and wanted to know the time, but you didn’t want your talking watch to interrupt the speaker? Are you hearing impaired or deafblind and “Braille” tactile watches aren’t up your alley? Now there’s a new solution!

Browsing the ads on the Blind Bargains app (available for IOS devices in the appstore), I came across a new product that I think is truly amazing. It’s called the Meteor, and is a vibrating pocket watch. Oval in shape with a cut out where three buttons are located, the Meteor, only available in black, is a stylish pocket watch with a great set of features. To check the time with the Meteor, you can press three buttons in any order. The first is hours, the second the tens unit of minutes, and the third the ones unit of minutes. For example, if you press all three buttons, you might get: hour- two long and one short, tens- two short, ones- one long. This would mean that the time is 11:25. If you already knew that it was somewhere after eleven, however (say your meeting runs from eleven to eleven thirty), you might press only the second and third buttons. Getting the same vibrations, you would learn that there were only five minutes left in the meeting (always a pleasure to know!). More examples and further explanations of the working of this watch can be found at the AT Guys Meteor page. There, you can also click to hear an audio demonstration of the watch and order it from AT Guys, currently the only carrier of the product in the U.S. The watch costs $117 plus shipping, and comes with a two-year warranty against hardware defects. The watch is also waterproof, but it isn’t suggested you put the watch in water (I imagine it can stand up against rain, but don’t take a bath with it!).

This watch is truly revolutionary, in my opinion, because it gives a good alternative to talking and tactile watches, and provides easy access to a time piece for the deafblind, a subgroup of the blind that is often left out with the creation of so many talking products.

There are two features I would like to see added to this watch in the future. First, I would love to see it as a wristwatch, so users don’t have to worry about keeping it in their pocket. Second, an alarm and hourly report function would be a boon. I can imagine someone wearing a Meteor vibrating wristwatch, and on the hour, it vibrates to let you know what time it is. This is a function of talking watches that is very useful, and I would compare it to a grandfather clock’s hourly chimes. An alarm function would also make this product better, allowing a deafblind person to set an alarm and slip the watch under their pillow to wake up to the vibration.

Overall, the Meteor is a great product with many uses, but there are a few things that would make it more useful. But the availability of an accessible timepiece for the deafblind is really exciting, and I hope you are as excited about it as I am.

It's TV, except it's not...

“You’re watching blindy TV…except you’re not, because you’re blind and it’s not TV.” During one of the faux-mercial breaks, you might hear this said. This seems to sum up what blindy.tv is in a nutshell. It’s not television, and you’re not watching it in the literal sense. It’s television programs over an internet stream with an audio-description track, sometimes also called DVS or descriptive video services. So what is blindy TV really about?

The Basics

As an organization, blindy.tv is completely charitable and completely volunteer-based. According to their website, they “contribute freely of [their] time and resources to provide a free described television programming service to those that are served by neither commercial products nor government programs.” To explain it further, it’s audio-described television for blind people who can’t see the television but miss out on what’s going on because our own country doesn’t provide the service or it’s not readily available. For me personally, I have television but I don’t have the cable box necessary to turn on audio descriptions for the few shows that have it. Unlike closed captioning, audio description isn’t something you can turn on or off on your television in the United States, but have to turn on/off through your cable box, through a maze of menus that blind people can’t navigate without sighted assistance.

Channels and Shows

The project, called “blindy TV” to signify that it’s offended by the lack of audio description in the mainstream and thinks you should be too, is a compilation of TV shows from the few countries where such programming is available, such as the United Kingdom. Some of the shows are quite old (I Love Lucy comes to mind), while others are previous episodes of ongoing shows like CSI and How It’s Made. There are currently five channels. Comedy brings shows like Two and a Half Men, I Love Lucy, and brief stand-up comedy skits. Drama delves more into CSI, House, and a newer addition, Revenge. Sci Fi beams you into Star Trek, Life on Mars, and the Vampire Diaries. Brain brings a mix of described and undescribed educational shows of various topics, though the recent update now has it favouring described content. Finally, Etcetera is just that, a bit of this and a bit of that. I’ve heard game shows like the Match Game and reality shows like Hell’s Kitchen. There are over 120 shows played regularly on the streamed channels, and going to the individual channel’s page gives you a schedule of the channel, though the channel playing in the background can make it hard to hear the schedule with a screenreader.

Connecting

What’s most exciting about blindy TV is that it can reach such a wide audience. Anyone who has a good internet connection can listen to the channels without any added hardware or software. It will run through their web player, Windows Media Player, iTunes, or any number of media players. If you have an iPhone, you can stream it through iTunes by clicking the “Listen to…” links. Another method of listening is through the iBlink Radio app (it’s under the “Community Radio” category). This app, available for both IOS and Android smartphones, provides a direct stream connection.

The Unfortunates

Blindy TV has its own set of problems, however. The biggest one I’ve encountered is the connection. Listening to my favourite shows, I am often disappointed when the connection hiccups and I have to reconnect, missing out on part of the episode I was watching. The people at blindy TV have been steadily working on and improving this issue, but it remains a major issue. Another unfortunate about the program is its episode age and variability. While a large number of newer episodes and shows have been added recently, there still remains a large portion of the streamed content that is older episodes and some shows are played at a much higher frequency than others. This is due to a lack of audio-described content being available, an issue that you as a listener can help to improve.

How can you make a difference?

Want to improve the variability of shows on blindy TV? Have a favourite show you’d like to see added to the schedule? The first thing you can do is contact blindy TV with your suggestions or comments using their contact form. Another method of helping is getting more and/or newer shows audio-described. If you have a favourite show or TV channel and want to see their content audio-described, contact them and ask. It can’t hurt, and it has already led to new audio-described shows being available. My current project is the Disney channel and TLC, the former because I feel children should have more access to audio descriptions and the Disney channel is one of the most popular kids’ channels and the latter because I have always loved their content and think it would give blind people a whole new playing field to work with in the categories of home design, fashion, and much much more. I decided to do this after watching a YouTube video encouraging people to contact broadcasters and ask for their content to be made accessible. Together, we can increase the number and variety of shows available in audio description and thereby help blindy TV expand their collection.

Final Thoughts

Blindy TV is a great resource, but it is truly the ghetto of television, as blindy.tv describes itself. It’s not accessible mainstream television; it’s not access to the same episodes and shows at the same time as our sighted friends and family…sometimes, it’s not even access at all. But for the time being, I feel it is the best option if you want television shows with audio described and aren’t lucky enough to live in a country where audio descriptions are readily available. For now, it’s what we have and we should be grateful for that, but we should also be offended that we don’t have access to real-time mainstream television. We should be offended, and we should take action. Are you with me? Add your comments about whether you use blindy.tv and/or want to make a difference. What shows or channels are you willing to approach and request audio descriptions from?

Android or IOS?

Smart phones are all the rage right now. If you haven’t heard that a million times, maybe you’re living under a rock. But which phone to choose? The top choices are the Samsung Galaxy series and the Apple iPhone series. Now, there is sooo much debate among people in the general population about which is best, and just like the general public, people with visual impairments are arguing back and forth about which is better: Android or IOS. Well, if you thought I was going to argue one way or the other, you’ve got another thing coming. One of the goals I set for this blog from the beginning was to be as unbiased as possible, to see things from all sides. If I write about one organization, I look for something to write about the other organizations (the NFB versus AFB versus ACB debate, for example), and if I talk about Apple and their iPhone, I’ll talk about Samsung Galaxy phones and Android as well.

Over the next months, I’m going to do a series of articles highlighting some great apps, some on Android and some on IOS. But to get you started looking for yourself, I’d like to point to two very nice websites/databases.

Android Access

For people with Android phones or thinking of getting an Android phone, there is Android Access, which is toted as “your portal to information on accessible Android apps and programs for the blind and visually impaired.” If you’re new to what phones are available, what screenreaders are used, and want an overview of what the Android Access website is all about, be sure to click on the “Getting Started” link (it’s the first link on the page). From there, you can go back to the main page and browse the accessible apps and reviews. There is so much to see, I’ll leave you to browse it all on your own.

Apple VIS

Now, what about iPhone users? We (because I am one of them!) have a nice website/database to turn to as well. It’s called Apple VIS. Its slogan is “Empowering blind and low-vision users of Apple products and related applications.” It doesn’t have the “Getting Started” page like Android Access; I guess it assumes you should dive right in and learn to swim as you go. However, you can register an account and start reviewing apps you’ve used almost instantaneously, and read the hundreds of app reviews that are already there. If I had been smart and looked at the Apple VIS site before buying subscriptions to several magazines through the Newstand built-in app, I would have learned that only a handful of Newstand magazines are actually accessible, and wouldn’t have wasted the time or money that I did, not to mention the excitement at the interesting magazines available. Now I check the website before I make any unwise purchases.

Conclusion

So, whether you prefer Android or IOS, or you’re comparing the accessibility of both to decide which to get, check out these websites to learn about accessible apps for those nifty little smart phones!