S1E18 - The Practical Magic of Braille & Navigating Audio Description

Hello and welcome to the Human
where See Things Differently podcast.

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Hey everybody, and welcome to episode 18 of See Things
Differently where we are an adult.

That's right.

The podcast is 18.

David, how do we get here?

I don't know, I think we've gone through
some sort of time warp alternative reality type stuff.

We've arrived at 18 at least.

Legal drinking age,
so to speak, here in Australia.

When I'm saying drinking, of course,
talking about cups of tea and so on.

Well, we have made it 18 and thank you all for listening
and coming along the journey with us.

And of course,
if you have anything that you want to see us cover in future
episodes, reach out to us.

Don't be shy, we'd love to chat
and we'd love to hear from you.

So podcast at where.

If you'd like to get in touch with us.

And today we have a very special guest
and we are kind of continuing the conversation that we started
last episode, which was episode 17.

So if you haven't, go ahead and catch up with that
in your podcast, Catcher of Choice.

And that is kind of the accessibility
in the workplace.

And we have another professional on today
who's going to tell us about her tech journey and career journey.

We are just going to have an absolutely
amazing time talking and then stick around.

Of course, for the hot topic
slash debate segment of the month where we'll be discussing, well,
you'll have to stick around to find out.

Ricky Anger is here.

She is the director of Practical
Help at the Hadley.

Is it school?

Is it Institute?

She is going to tell us all that and more.

So Ricky, welcome to the podcast.

David and I are thrilled that you're here.

Thank you so much for having me.

I am delighted to be here. So it is.

It's funny. It's just Hadley now.

It was Hadley School for the Blind
and Visually Impaired and then it was Hadley Institute.

Now it's just Hadley.

I don't think there's much more shortening
that we can do.

I don't want to just be Hadley.

Yeah, well that's wonderful.

I know Hadley has been around
for a very long time.

I took a transitioning to unified English
Braille course through them
quite a number of years ago now.

It was fantastic.

But before we start where you are.

Let's start with where you've been.

Tell us a little bit about you,
maybe your journey with Braille, and then we can kind of hop into maybe your tech and your career journey,
if that's okay with you.

That sounds awesome.

So yeah, I grew up in a very small town.

It was the only blind person
in that small town, and I have to say, people
didn't quite know what to do with me.

I don't know if that was because blindness
or any number of other things, but I will say that for me,
Braille was one of those things that I really feel like
it changed the trajectory of my life.

Not to be dramatic,
but having come from a family who weren't readers
and then being introduced when I got to school
to this whole new world of, you mean I can grab a book or a magazine and just dive into that story
and be lost for hours and hours?

It was wonderful and allowed me to do things like participate
in spelling bees.

And you know, if you read enough books,
you got a pizza party or whatever it is.

So reading has always been such a passion of mine, and it definitely shows up
in the workplace.

I didn't, you know, become a librarian
or anything, but certainly Braille is one of those things
that has carried me through quite a lot.

So I graduated college.

My first job was working
with a recruiting agency for people with physical disabilities,
and there was a lot that went into that.

Essentially,
our function was to get people placed in employment,
and sometimes what that meant was just connecting them with the
the right people.

But a lot of times
it meant doing a bit of work before that career could take place.

Maybe they needed some Microsoft Office
training in order to be ready for the workplace
or resume writing interviewing skills.

All of these things that perhaps they
hadn't had a chance to put into practice.

And so I did that until I became apparent, took a took a couple of years off
to to raise my son, then jumped in to wearing several hats
for a company called Sarah Tech.

And there I did some sales, some tech support, some podcasting, and just about every other hat
you could think of.

And it was great because I never knew
from one moment to the next what I would be doing in a day.

Fast forward a bit and after

Sarah Tech,
I did web accessibility testing.

So essentially checking out websites
and apps from anything from fortune 500 companies and airlines
to small businesses.

I worked as a consultant, but
I worked with a company of consultants, if that makes any sense, and we showed people sort of, hey, this is what's wrong.

This is how you fix it.

And this is why it should matter to you.

And that was that was amazing in that
it was a chance to talk about the importance of things
being accessible to everyone.

So not just blind or low vision people, people with motor difficulties or people
who were deaf or hard of hearing.

But it all came down to
if you can design this in a way that is universally accessible,
whether that means you do have either a temporary
or permanent disability or you don't, and you just happen to be in a situation
where, hey, I'm out in the sunlight and this glare makes it
so I can't read my screen.

Well, you know what?

There are ways
that you can design your site or your app so that even in those situations,
it works for you.

And sadly, sometimes that's what it took
for people to be motivated.

Oh, you mean me?

This could affect me.
Okay, sure, we'll fix that.

That's usually what it comes down to.

It's unfortunate that we can't,
you know, be more,

I guess, empathetic, you know,
until it kind of hits us directly.

Exactly.

I love that you've been able to do that.

And it sounds like
you've had quite a number of jobs.

And we haven't even gotten to your work
with Hadley yet.

I know I want to get there,
but through all your jobs,

I just had a quick question.

How have you done any type of training
or kind of preparatory work for your jobs, and how has Braille
maybe helped you in that process?

Braille has been essential
in so many ways, and I would say that when it comes to.

So just going back to doing some interviewing or resume writing,
that kind of thing, one of the big things with making sure that someone who's livelihood may depend on how their resume looks,
you got to be able to proofread that.

And often doing that through audio,
there's a lot you're not going to catch.

And so having the ability to look at not only how things were spelled and that's always been a passion of mine,
is just the the shape and the rhythm of language
and how things come across in text.

I love that, and it's so important to make sure that things are coming across
in the way that you intend.

So doing that sort of proofreading.

But additionally,
if you can, then at the time it was printing it out in Braille, now
you would use something like a monarch.

But if you can check out
the formatting of something and just easily
scan down through and see, oh, there's a spacing error
or there's, you know, some sort of issue with the
that shouldn't be italicized.

How did that even happen?
Things like that.

That was essential. And probably the biggest way that Braille continues to be so important to me is the ability to reach over and jot a note, or read a note without being influenced, I suppose, by audio.

So, Rachel, David, you know this.

If you're doing podcasting,
which I've done a bit of part of that is doing some active listening.

And so you're paying close attention
to what your guest is saying so that you can have an intelligent
follow up with them or interject wherever you need to, and having any notes that you want to refer to in
Braille makes it so much easier to really be in that moment
and paying attention and not being okay.

There's 50% eloquence and 50% guest.

Yeah, we are chuckling because yes, we know it's so hard to keep track of, you know,
a lot of different screens, right?

We have our program
that we're all using to record this.

There's that screen. There's
you know my notes screen.

And sometimes it's just easier.
Let me put this in Braille.

Oh definitely having something
that you can refer to regardless of how noisy the environment is, regardless of, oh, my Bluetooth headset, unpaired itself
or any number of other things that can and do happen, having some notes that you've made to yourself is amazing.

And even you mentioned travel being on the plane where it's really,
really loud, I always find that I get my best reading done,
just trying to block out the world with my little braille display reading
until I get to my destination.

And then of course, there are things
getting a bit more practical, I suppose.

But if you're doing
any sort of interaction with people,
whether that's sales or emails or anything where it matters
that you acknowledge a person's name, it shows that you're paying attention
to those little details.

There are names that you could hear them
and think,

I know how to spell that,
and you would be very, very wrong.

Yes, I checked just out of habit now because even yeah, like you said, a name
I think I would know how to spell.

There's a lot of different variations.

You have people from different countries
or just different spellings, and I want to make sure that I show people
the respect they deserve by spelling their name correctly.

So often we hear about how Braille is going to be obsolete soon.

We have audio.

We're not going to need Braille anymore,
and nothing can get me going quite like that. But that'll be a soapbox for a different episode,
perhaps.

But you know,
even if you are learning Braille later in life, maybe you didn't
lose your vision until later and you think, well,
why do I need to know Braille?

I'm not going to be reading novels or

War and Peace is not on my list
of literature on your TV profile.

For real? Nope.

Even if you don't want to do that,
there are so many practical uses for Braille.

We put them on our spices,
we put labels on the microwave, or even people can put labels on medication to tell the difference
between those things.

And even if you're not a super fast
Braille reader, if you know a few letters, then you can use that to differentiate
or write down a phone number like you just said. David.

So there are so many things
that you don't have to be fast at it.

You don't have to be amazing at it.

It can find a place in your life
regardless.

So this
I think, segways really well into Reiki.

You are the Director of Practical
Help at Hadley, and we were just discussing
some very practical uses for Braille.

But tell us a little bit more
about what you do like.

What sorts of practical help do you offer?

I can talk about what Hadley does
because I like to say that we are about 100 year old startup,
and the reason I say that is because the Hadley, which has been around for 100 years,
it's a really cool story.

It was a guy,
an educator, who lost his sight later in life
due to a bout with the flu, apparently.

And he was an English teacher.

So as you can imagine, he loved reading and decided,
well, I'm not going to stop reading.

And maybe there were audio books or just starting
to come to fruition at that time.

But he thought, I need to learn Braille
not only to read my literature, but for other things as well.

And he noticed I can't be
the only person who is in this situation needing to learn braille,
and perhaps didn't go to a school for the blind, didn't
lose their vision until later in life.

And so he created Braille by mail.

So it was distance learning
before distance learning was cool, and after that it progressed from Braille to any number of other things
learning Braille music.

We had a GED course at one point
for people who didn't graduate high school
and still wanted to.

We did math, and I think there were gardening courses and just about anything
you could think of.

They were approached in sort of
an academic way where you would have a an instructor and you would get a grade
at the end of the thing.

And it worked great for a lot of people.

But what we found
was that there were a number of people who were falling through the cracks,
and those were the older adults
who were new to vision loss.

So they would walk into these
conversations almost in the middle.

The doctor would say, there's
nothing we can do for you.

Good luck and send them on their way, because there was nothing medically
that was going to happen after that.

And so here they are.

And if they are googling,
if they're able to see the screen well enough to still do that,
or maybe there's a family member doing so and they hear about one thing and another.

But all of these terms
don't always make sense.

It's like walking
into the sea of acronyms, you know, on m,

AFB, CQB, NFP, NLS.

What is all that? Right?

No idea.

And all of the materials that are produced
assume that knowledge.

They assume that you have spoken to someone
in some sort of state or local service for blind or low vision people,
and a lot of these people had not.

So they were looking for help.

Whether that was adjusting to vision loss, emotionally,
socially, things like that, or whether
it was the side that I work with which is practical help,
how do I use my microwave now?

How do I tell when my food is done?

Or how do I clean my house and be sure that I have mopped the floor
appropriately?

And there's not one big spot
that I've missed.

Yeah, how do I use my iPhone
or my Android device, or my computer?

So all of these things that people are wondering how to do, that's the sort of material
that we now produce at Hadley.

And it's not a graded course, rather it's a series of bite sized videos.

But essentially the videos are it's audio,
that's the main content.

And then there are illustrations of what
it might look like on your iPhone screen.

If you're zooming in
or you're making things larger, changing contrast
or whatever it is, and you don't have to see to get
what you need out of the videos.

But if you can, it's extra information
that you may find helpful.

One of the things that we do,
the Braille program, is certainly alive and well at Hadley,
but it has a different approach now.

It used to be that you would kind of learn the history of
Braille, and you would learn all sorts of things before you ever touched a Braille letter.

And now the idea is, let's
get you using it right away.

So you get a book with three letters,
and it's the first three letters, and you'll see those letters
in different configurations.

You'll learn to recognize them
just a line of A's or a line of bees or a few A's, and then a full cell
and a few B's and a full cell.

And really,
that's because if you're not accustomed to taking in information
with your fingers, that is as much a part of the learning process
as learning the symbols themselves.

Totally.

So, yeah, you know, we've got people learning those first three letters
and then, okay, here you go.

Here's a couple of stickers.

You can put these anywhere
on something in your house that starts with an A or B or C
or do whatever you want with it.

And they start to make use of it.

Getting back to sort of the practical
use of brown in the in the recording type stuff too, because most all the podcasts
that I still do,

I actually have brown notes actually
sitting on my lap on my brow display.

And because there's just like
Rachel was saying, there was no way.

And you mentioned this to me, there's
no way that I could concentrate on audio.

It's like, you know, 0.1.2, 0.3, whereas

I can actually read and brown
and sometimes when I'm reading in the bar down my notes,
I go, hey, in a minute, point nine should have come before point four
even before I start recording.

And then I change it around and
and muck about with it.

But yeah, I just, I just find the ability
to be able to do that really good.

I had a webinar yesterday
as we're doing this recording today, and

I had to write down about ten different websites,
and they were all very similar names.

And I thought, yeah, there's no way I'm using that
with speech or memory or anything else.

I'm just going to read them.

And somebody said to me,
how do you know all these websites?

And I said, I've got it
written down. That's how I know them.

That's where the magic is.

Yeah, exactly.

Then somebody
and in some in the audience will go, so you're not actually writing them down,
so to speak, are you?

Oh well ready for that to be.

So if you're listening to a book
are you reading it.

Yeah. That is not the debate topic.

But no, it's not.

It's a good woman, but it's not.

It should have been a three hour episode
to bring it back to your work.

I guess we ended where we started with your career journey,
but what type of technology do you use, either in your current job
or your past jobs?

I'd love to know.

Maybe some of your hobbies.

And do you use Braille
in those areas of your life?

While I actually haven't needed to ask for any accommodations in my workplace,

I've always been about
if there is something that isn't working as it should,
whether it is testing websites for airlines and pointing out
where things are falling short so that people who come after me
aren't going to have the same issue, or just figuring out more efficient ways
to do things, say in Salesforce,
which is something that we're using now.

And Salesforce is incredibly powerful.

And at least at my workplace,
it's also incredibly cluttered, too.

So just figuring out those efficient ways
to to get around and Braille is so helpful in all of that,
whether it is being able to take notes on one device as I'm testing on another, or whether it is, again, reading information,
if I'm on the phone with someone and I don't want to be processing
two audio sources.

So just having that opportunity
to read the information from their record and not have to ask them to repeat things
they've already said because it's right there.

That has been so useful for me.

So believe it or not,
we're going to come back to Braille again because my main hobby is reading.

So whether that's reading in Braille
or reading in audiobooks, you probably can't find me after hours
without a book.

So I like reading books.

I end up talking about books
in my workplace because we have a book club for the,
you know, community who wants to join it.

So isn't that awesome that I get to talk
about a thing that I love?

I also love cooking.

I can't say I'm amazing at it, but sometimes that is one of those things that you don't have to be good
at something to enjoy doing it.

And I think cooking is that for me,
I like learning new techniques.

I like exploring different kitchen
gadgets.

I suppose gadgets are my hobby really,
whether it's technology or in the kitchen.

Yes, or any of that word games.

I love playing any kind of word game.

You know, word
play in general, I love that.

And so nothing,
nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

Skydiving is not a hobby.

I've never done that, but.

I could just imagine zooming
pass on a jet ski, you know, like riding off of the sunset
or doing with a windsurfing or, you know, canoeing down the rapids in a
in some gorge somewhere.

So, yeah, that's that's a previous guest
that was Mr.

Wilkinson. He was.

Yes. He is definitely a thrill seeker.

Vicky,
thank you so much for just sharing with us some of your story and your journey,
and it makes us all so happy to hear how vital Braille is, both in the workplace, out of the workplace,
just to life in general.

And I love that it's not,
you know, all of of Braille, but you also offer help
with other types of either technology or adjustment,
division loss or cooking or cleaning.

And it just shows, you know, sometimes, you know, we all
we all need a little bit of help.

Can you tell folks
how how can they get in touch with Hadley if they're listening
and they think, you know,

I can maybe use a little bit of help
with this, that or the other thing in my life that relates to blindness.

Absolutely.

So the URL is Hadley helps dog.

So Hadley helps.

We used to be Hadley.

But kind of that shift away from academics
we're now Hadley helps.

We have information in braille, in large print or in audio.

You can find our discussion groups.

And I host a bi weekly podcast called
Hadley Presents There as well.

You can also in the US
it's a toll free number.

It's (800) 323-4238.

I'd love to hear from you.

Hey everybody, and welcome to the Hot Topic segment for this month
where we will debate a topic and get some really interesting
sides of it.

I think we are still with Ricky

Anger from Hadley and David Woodbridge,
of course.

So the topic for discussion is audio
description.

Would we prefer it to be either

AI slash text to speech given, or do we prefer the human narrated
audio description that has been added to a lot of movies
and TV shows recently, which is wonderful
that we have so much more content.

I know growing up
I would get VHS tapes from the library with audio description, and we thought
that was the greatest thing ever.

But now with streaming
and all of those content sources, there's there's a lot more.

So, David,
I'm going to throw it over to you.

What are your thoughts on
audio description and which method do you prefer?

There's a few things.

So sometimes I think the people that right
audio description should actually learn
how to do audio description.

Because some of the audio description
that I've listened to you almost might as well
not have it going at all, because it actually makes it
sometimes even more confusing.

So that's that's number one.

Number two the and this goes with audiobook
listening as well a little bit.

But sometimes the person's narration or even just their voice
doesn't fit in with the movie.

So you've got this really sort of,
you know, this very serious going on in the movie and like,
you know, you know, it might be somebody who's dying and it's in hospital
and they've got carers around this.

The narration voice is going, well, look,
they've just popped into the hospital and about to have an operation,
and she's standing there crying heart out.

It's like, dude, you really shouldn't
be sounding all happy and fantastic doing the audio description
because you're doing an audio description.

You need to be a little bit more,
you know, monotone or be a bit quieter.

Don't be so as chirpy
as you probably should be.

So I've noticed that a few times.

I mean,
I haven't noticed that for a while.

So that's number two. Number three.

And look, I know on some of the particularly of the Apple
TV movies coming out recently, there was just so much happening
on the screen that I sometimes wish that, you know, in the the movies,
when you go to a movie theater, you've got a separate audio track
that's sort of in your ear and in your quote, listening slash
watching the movie in the theater,

I sometimes wish you could have a separate
audio track completely, because that way they could almost talk over the, you know,
the characters speaking initially, all the action scenes going on,
because sometimes, you know, they'll just go door opens.

It's like, okay, fine, what's what's
so significant about the door opening?

If they had more time, it's like,
yeah, the door's open.

The person's just dive through there,
laying on the floor, the rifles raised, and he's taking aim
at whatever else it might be.

You know, an action type movie,
but they don't have enough time to give meaningful dialog sometimes.

And when it comes to AI, text
to speech or human narration,

I'm sort of one of these people that as long as I get access
to information, I'm not too bothered.

The problem I've gotten it probably
happens more from a square meeting type point of view rather than AI doing it,
but I'm assuming I would do it.

And that's because sometimes AI or text to speech thinks that everybody lives
in the United States of America.

So when you come, you know you're in Australia,
and all of a sudden you hear the person that's just driven
from Sydney to Washington and you go, no, was actually Western Australia.

In Australia,
it's got nothing to do with Washington.

And I'm pretty sure that you can't drive
a vehicle across.

You better have an amphibious car.

So probably that's my little
those are my little bugbears.

And I guess the other thing about
getting back to that audio separate track,

I've got a household of,
you know, quote, light dependent people, as some people
refer them to side of people and they absolutely cannot stand audio
description.

It drives them crazy.

So if I could have like a separate thing,
you know, like

I've got my Apple TV, for example,
and I could say, okay, so I want you to send this audio
track to my AirPods Max.

Nobody else in the household
has to listen to the audio track.

That would be fantastic
because yeah, I just get I just get grumpy family members.

I mean, yes,
they're fully aware of the fact that, you know, it's audio description and dad can enjoy the movie and blah,
blah, blah, but they still don't like it.

So that's my other thing
that I'd love to see happen, but I'd certainly the end of the day,
I'd prefer to have audio description in whatever form,
then not have not to have it at all.

Your turn, Miss Ricky.

Talk to us. All right. Okay.

So I'm with David in that

I would prefer audio description
in whatever form.

Yeah.

I feel like there's some caveats there
because if we aren't pushing for quality audio description, then they can throw whatever at us and say,
hey, it's good enough, right?

Is better than nothing.

And so sometimes I feel conflicted about,
oh, the AI is good enough.

And really, there are lots of talented
people who can do add scripts, writing and add narration.

And in fact there are blind
voiceover artists using braille doing this thing.

And so I want to push for that wherever possible.

But I think that there's a difference in what I expect from a human narrator versus
what I expect from an AI narration.

So when there is a human audio description
narrator, there are things that they can do
to completely pull me out of the story.

And one of those is
exactly what David was talking about, where the tone just doesn't match
what's actually happening on screen.

And I'm thinking.

Do you know what you're reading for?

Or you're just
you came in and read some lines.

Another part of that
is figuring out pronunciations.

So I was watching I think it was yeah, it was Star Trek.

Starfleet Academy, and they had a character her name was to, and Tamora did this then to.

Rima did that,
then Tamora did something else.

Oh dear.

Whoops.

I was actually confused.

For the first couple of episodes.

I really had to pay attention
to figure out what is your actual name, because audio description keeps getting it
wrong and pronouncing nacelles as nacelles and things that as a fan,
you just go, okay, clearly you don't know the property
that you're reading for and you haven't watched it, and there's not quality control
at the end of it.

Listening to say you've gotten this right,
or you could do a bit more work.

Now if it were AI, I wouldn't go in
with those same expectations.

In fact, I would probably assume
that it was going to get it wrong.

Yeah,
as long as it got it wrong consistently.

I'm okay with that, right?

There are people who are working toward this very thing
for quality control in audio description and getting the audio description, narrators or writers
the credit that they deserve.

Because in some of these instances,
they don't even name who was voicing it.

So you don't know who to praise or be mad
at, depending on how good it was.

And I'd like to see more of that.

There are two points that I think
David made that

I found really interesting
and feel a bit differently about.

So one of them is the the family member discussion of,
you know, they hate it.

And it sure would be nice if we could have
something that only we could listen to.

And I do absolutely agree with that part.

What I found interesting
is that I didn't use audio description for a very long time,
because I made assumptions that any light dependent people in my house
would be thoroughly annoyed and taken out of the story.

And why do this for me
when everyone else here doesn't need it?

And it turned out not to be the case.

My light dependent people, for whatever reason,
or they actually appreciated.

And sometimes the audio description
will allow them to catch something that they didn't notice on screen either
because they were off getting popcorn or because it just slipped right
past visually.

Right.
And that was something that they noticed.

So I feel like it's worth saying that certainly there will be those people like David's family who are just like,
turn this off.

This is so annoying.

I hate it, but maybe it's important
not to.

If you're listening
and you think that's the case for your family, but
you've never really put that to the test.

It could be interesting to do that,
just to be sure.

Maybe they end up liking it.

The other thing I wanted to mention
is the issue of having more description.

So more time for description.

And sometimes there will be things
like you want to know what people are wearing, because a costume is a part
of whatever story is being told.

That's not always true, but it can be
depending on what you're watching. And it's there have been discussions about how to do this.

So maybe you get the DVD
and there is an extended audio track where you could just pause it
and or there is an intro that describes some visual
things that are never going to fit right there in the dialog
or the time that you have.

I don't think anyone has quite
figured it out yet, and for me, I'm thinking it's because I'm more of a reader.

Any it's very easy
to take me out of the story, and so I don't want to be distracted
by anything.

You know, just keep it going.
Keep it going.

I've got two hours that I've devoted to this,
and now I've got to get back to my book so I'm less likely to want that sort of thing.

But for those who do, and there are a lot things are happening in that direction.

I think we
we do both agree that for the most part, having audio description is better
than not having audio description.

If it comes down to it, I would much
prefer the human eye would do.

Really, what I want is the quality.

And I think if you're if you're using AI, you probably haven't
spent a great deal of time doing that quality assurance or thinking through
anything other than the very basics.

Well, as always,
I love these hot topic segments.

They really kind of get us to talk
about different issues of the day, or different sides of something that we maybe
haven't really investigated too much.

All I really know is
there is text to speech audio description and there's human narrated,
and I'm just kind of like, you guys happy that that it exists,
but just because it exists.

Ricky, like you said, we can not be happy
just with, oh, it exists and we will be grateful.

No, let's make it better.

Like we have kind of the baseline.

Let's improve that.

Hey everybody, and welcome to Trials and Triumphs.

We are back this month with this segment.

And I've got a fun one.

And I know David got some fun stories, but my story is dealing with computer repair.

And this is still ongoing so I don't know.

Tune in next month
and I should have it fixed by then.

But I have a framework laptop
which is a modular laptop, and all that means is they give you a special screwdriver
that you can unscrew the bottom.

And they very well written guides
that you can replace various parts.

So I needed a new keyboard for this laptop
and I took the guide off the website.

I put it through AI and asked
AI to describe any images that it saw in a blind, friendly way. And it did.

My guide was great
and I put it on the monarch, and

I read it in Braille,
and I went on to replace my keyboard.

Now, there were definitely
some interesting aspects to that, because the ribbon cable is very,
very thin.

And don't mistake
that for a cardboard label like I did and tear it off the keyboard,
because then you will need to return said keyboard and get a new one
before you can replace it.

But I learned a lot in the process.

Now you may think,
all right, you got a new keyboard.

It's all fixed, right? Well, yes and no.

Yes, I know now how to connect it.

And I do have a new keyboard
and it's working fine.

When I was exploring
the insides of the laptop and looking
where the connector went, I ended up disconnecting the wireless card
from the main board.

And because the pins are very, very small,
it is very difficult to reconnect the wireless card
and all of its associated cables.

So I am still working on this.

Hence
why this is an ongoing trial and triumph.

So my triumph was I replaced the keyboard.

My trial is I'm still trying
to replace the wireless, which is usually why I have stuck
to building desktops, because the hardware is a lot easier to differentiate between.

But that is my trial and triumph.

And David, what she got,
because you've got something pretty great.

I'll start off with a less bad one.

Well, I'll the list idiotic one,
and then I'll get to the idiotic ones.

So what happened to me
was I accidentally spilled a little bit of coffee
in my keyboard on my MacBook.

So I took it into the shop
and I said to the dude, look,

I'm really sorry
I didn't spend a little bit of coffee.

So when he opened up the Mac
and looked into the keyboard, he went, yeah, it looks like it did.

More than a bit of a splash, mate.

I think you might have actually dumped
about a whole half a cup of coffee in your keyboard.

And it went well.

Now you mentioned it. Maybe. So.

Luckily he was able
to, you know, do the proper repair person and dry it all out and, you know,
do everything else and started working.

And I picked it up in the afternoon.

So that's the positive story,
the really, really idiotic story.

List of concern is I yet again
spilled coffee on my keyboard.

Now this time I panicked
because I had to fly out to Singapore the next day to go and do a conference.

So spilled my coffee and I went, oh,
I can try this really quickly and you probably start grabbing
when I say this with a hairdryer.

Said person gets hairdryer and goes, oh, if I set it on the highest hot
setting, it'll dry out faster.

So I turned it on, owned it at the
the keyboard and the keys on my keyboard
started to melt.

They started to deconstruct and flop over
and I went, what have I done?

Because it didn't occur to me that adding heat to plastic,
certain types of plastic will still melt.

Of course.

So I took it back to my favorite
repair person.

Oh no, you didn't do what I think
you did know it.

Would you believe it was really hot?

And I lifted out on the table outside my patio went,
no, you're one of these stupid people.

Apparently, that actually tried
to dry your keyboard with a hairdryer.

You went well, maybe.

So again, this poor person
who's actually very good, he replaced the whole keyboard and I was able
to fly out to Singapore the next day.

But that's my that's my trial, my and my triumph
for both was I got both fixed.

I kept working, so I was able to go on.

By the way, your repair to your sorry.

Your frame.

Sorry what? Your computer again.

Framework. Yeah.

Your framework computer sounds like
you should be back in the 1980s and 1990s.

Like, that's when I had to pull out sound cards and put in synthesizer boards
and add modem cards.

Like, what's this need to even go inside
a computer in the first place?

It's like, it's horrible.

It sounds fun because you can, you know, you can upgrade components
as you need them.

So the processor and the main board
and all of that good stuff.

So the the idea is, is fantastic.

If you're me and you were unfamiliar with the all of all of the, the parts and the connectors, which always happens,
you know, when you see something new, then you're you're taking the scenic route
and you're learning so lovely.

I'm sure it'll all turn out fine.

I'll just go with the David's,
mode of practice.

If something breaks,
I just go and buy a new one.

Welcome back again.

Our tips and tricks is going to be
a quick one because I thought it's.

This will literally
take you less than 10s to do.

It's probably
gonna take me 30s to explain.

So why this tip came about was because we're talking about accessing
Braille access on your iOS device, you know, iPhone or iPad,
and of course, on your standard Bryant by 20, by 40 or any other player that has a input Braille keyboard,
it's always dots seven and eight.

You press together with VoiceOver
running to toggle on and off bell access,
where you can access your files.

You can do the editor editor, you can do live captioning,
all that sort of cool stuff.

Now, I was confronted with my mantis 40 the other day
because I had to demonstrate by Alexis.

Now, because I don't often demonstrate
braille access on the mantis,

I suddenly thought,
I can't remember how to do it.

I haven't done it for about three months.

I just completed Let My Brain.

So I quickly asked beautiful
AI and they said, oh yeah, look, all you need to do is you
press control option Y when you're running a voiceover on the query keyboard
that turns on Braille keyboard mode.

And then of course, that turns the home
row into your Braille keyboard key.

So A is dot seven
and then S would be dot three and so on.

So then you would press a
and semicolon i.e. dot seven and eight and then allows you
to activate bell access.

Now sometimes that will not work as
I discovered when I tried this this week.

So what I had to do
was I had to toggle VoiceOver on and off, which is normally do
many things don't work.

That didn't work.

So I restarted my iPhone,
restarted VoiceOver again just to make sure reconnected the mantis
and it was all fine.

So the trick is, if it's not working
when you turn on your Braille keyboard mode with control option
Y when you're running VoiceOver, then just remember that you need to restart
and do things, and then it'll be fixed.

And just a final sort of a sub
tip for this.

Don't get confused
between the brow access mode and the F12 function,
which turns also turns on a Perkins style keyboard mode
when you're just on the mantis itself.

Hey everybody, it's time for the upcoming
shows segment.

From July 3rd through July 8th, we will be
at the National Federation of the Blind

National Convention in Austin, Texas
from July 7th through July 8th.

We will be at Site
Village Central in Birmingham, England.

If you happen to be in any of those
places, please stop by our booth.

Come and say hello.

We'd love to chat with you.

If you have comments or suggestions,
we'd love to hear from you.

Please send them to podcast at Human.

That's podcast at.

Thanks so much for listening.

To see things differently.

We'll see you next month.