Dear AccessWorld Readers,

You may have noticed that at the end of each article, we always thank the Teubert Foundation for their support of AccessWorld. The Teubert Foundation is quite the remarkable organization and I wanted to take this space to spotlight the organization's history and work.

The James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust (The Teubert Foundation) was formed from the estate of Clinton J. Teubert. Teubert was born in 1888 and began working at the local Huntington post office at age 16. He served in World War I, and once his service concluded, he returned to work at the post office. When he retired in 1955, he had become the postal auditor. He was seen as an eccentric man, wearing second hand clothing and shoes with holes in them that some say he found tossed out on the street. Teubert was also an voracious reader, and I have heard that this was one of the factors that lead him to donate the majority of his estate to those with vision loss, as he believed that it would be terrible to not be able to read. Teubert was an avid investor, and unbeknownst to many, had amassed a sizable fortune by the time of his death in 1979 at the age of 91. He was killed by being struck by a car.

At the time of his death, Teubert's holdings amounted to around $2.5 million. His will primarily left his funds to various organizations; for example, he set aside a portion to provide supplies for local little league baseball. His will was written on the back of a notice from one of the stocks that he held, and was fiercely contested in court. It was eventually ruled that the will stood, and the Teubert Foundation was founded in 1987.

Over its more than 30-year history, the Teubert Foundation has funded many blindness-related projects and organizations both local and national. In 1990, the Teubert Foundation began supporting the Space Camp for Visually Impaired Students program, which allows students with vision loss to attend the international Space Camp located in Huntsville, Alabama. The camp is slightly adapted to make it more accessible for blind/low vision participants, including braille instructions and tactile labels on controls. Based on my knowledge, students are able to do everything that their sighted peers would, including rock climbing, scuba diving, and 0-g mission simulations.

The Teubert Foundation also provided the initial funding to establish a services organization for people with vision loss in the Huntington area in the early 1990s. Called the Cabell Wayne Association for the Blind (CWAB), the organization provides free transportation, free computers with adaptive software, orientation and mobility and technology skills training, as well as many other services. The foundation provides funding to CWAB to this day.

As you may have surmised, the Teubert Foundation also provides funding to the American Foundation for the Blind. When the AFB was deciding on where to locate their West Virginia office, the offer of funding from the Teubert Foundation was a deciding factor when the decision was made to locate the office in Huntington. Huntington became the tech hub for AFB, housing AccessWorld, AFB Consulting, and AFB's app development efforts. Today, the huntington office includes AccessWorld along with portions of the Communications, Finance, and Resource Development departments.

The Teubert Foundation also hosts an annual Teubert Interagency Council, bringing together many organizations in the greater Huntington area who have interests in the field of blindness. This includes representatives from the Veterans administration, the State Department of Rehabilitation, local teachers of the visually impaired, AFB, and other local service organizations.

More recently, Funding provided by the Teubert Foundation has lead the American Printing House to have a presence in Huntington. The first grant provided funding to launch APH's Good Maps platform in several Huntington locations. In addition, training was provided for local people with vision loss on the use of the platform.

I personally have greatly benefited from the foundation's presence in Huntington. I remember attending its program for young children with vision loss; I still vividly remember having the opportunity to pet a live golden eagle during one presentation. When I entered K-12 education, CWAB provided video magnifiers along with screen reader equipped computers for my use. When I was in elementary, I also learned how to use my screen access software (Window Eyes at that time) from CWAB. I was very fortunate to be able to attend Space camp for several years thanks to Teubert sponsored scholarships and had my first job at 15 as an AFB summer intern thanks to Teubert bringing AFB to Huntington. I worked as an intern for AFB all through university and work from Huntington as your editor to this day thanks to the Teubert Foundation's support of the Huntington office.

Considering its (relative) small size and fairly rural location, Huntington is a focal point of the field of blindness thanks to the Teubert Foundation. I sincerely thank Clinton Teubert for the compassion he held for people with vision loss and also thank the Teubert Foundation for the excellent work they have done stewarding the resources left by Teubert as well as the amazing support they have provided to so many vital organizations and projects in West Virginia.

Sincerely,

Aaron Preece

AccessWorld Editor in Chief

Deborah Kendrick

When talking about Matt Campbell, his friend, business partner, and mentor, Mike Calvo, frequently and affectionately referred to him as "the boy genius". Calvo is somewhat legendary in access technology circles himself, as chronicled in this AccessWorld article from September 2007, From Street Kid to CEO. Campbell has been connected to Calvo’s own journey in this field for 20 years now. When Calvo uses that handle to describe his younger friend, the respect, admiration, and love is palpable. Matt Campbell, aka "boy genius," is no longer a boy—he celebrated his fortieth birthday recently—but he is, arguably, well deserving of the "genius" half of that affectionate epithet.

While his name may not be immediately familiar to you, Campbell's brilliance has touched many of the programs and products that probably are. He has been lending his talent to the community of blind computer users since he was a sophomore in college. He was the secret weapon of the company that would become Serotek, went to work on Narrator for Microsoft, and is now Chief Technology Officer for Pneuma Solutions. His is a story not only of how an innate talent for programming can become a successful career, but can serve as an example of how one among us can work to lift up the rest.

Beginning

Born with optic nerve hypoplasia, Matt Campbell has always had limited vision. He went to programs for blind and visually impaired kids in a series of three elementary schools (the program moved around, so the boy had to follow!), and ultimately, when he was in eighth grade, his parents enrolled him in the same private school attended by his sighted siblings. In first grade, he was touch-typing. In third grade, he was learning braille and, although he never became a fluent braille reader, depending instead on audio and magnification, his early understanding of multiple formats helped establish his overall awareness and spirit of inclusiveness.

At eight, he was programming on his family's Apple II computer. To see the results of his coding explorations, he pressed his face close to the screen, not knowing anything that early on about audio output alternatives.

At Sunrise Christian Academy, the private school where he ultimately enrolled, the principal parlayed Campbell’s flair for programming into a positive publicity opportunity for the school. A fundraiser to buy Campbell a laptop equipped with screen magnification software led to inspirational media coverage for the boy and the school. With some amusement, he recalls how he showed off for the TV camera, touch-typing Bible verses on his shiny new laptop to dazzle the adults. As an adult, Campbell finds the memory a bit embarrassing, but as a kid, he admits that he relished both the media attention and the resulting computer! He’s quick to point out that he wasn’t always an angelic kid: “Sometimes during study hall, I would work on programming projects on that laptop rather than studying like I was supposed to. And I spent lots of time on the internet at home when I should have been doing homework. But … all of that led me to the work I'm doing now.”

As a college sophomore at Wichita State University, he garnered a different kind of media attention. In perhaps his first major contribution to the computing community of blind and visually impaired consumers, Matt developed a tool enabling Linux users to play audio content—movies, music, spoken recordings—on their Linux machines, and to do so completely accessibly. He wrote it and he shared it at no cost to any blind or low vision person who might find it useful. A journalist for Linux News, a publication promoting all things Linux, profiled the 19-year-old programmer with clear admiration for both his programming talent and his generosity.

It wouldn’t be long before he met Calvo..

FreedomBox

Matt Campbell was still in college when he went to work on FreedomBox, a somewhat revolutionary product that brought not only blind and low vision people but people with limited dexterity or use of their hands to the table of desktop computer users.

Mike Calvo’s brainstorm, the FreedomBox was first developed by a team in Russia, but Campbell eventually took it over. As the small company’s only software developer, Campbell saw the concept take flight, so to speak, and evolve into an amazing network of features and capabilities. AccessWorld reviewed that product around its fourth birthday in the May 2006 issue, The Liberty to Use a Computer,.

Eventually the company was called Serotek, and the flagship product renamed System Access and its network SAMNet (the System Access Mobile Network).

The all-in-one product offered word processing, web surfing, email, books, newspapers, games, social media, and more. Campbell was like the wizard behind the curtain making all of it happen.

In 2009, the year that the iPhone took center stage in the worldwide blind community as the first completely accessible mainstream computer product, apps designed specifically for blind and low vision consumers began emerging as well. One of the first and most dazzling was iBlink Radio. The original app was designed by a contractor, but by the end of the next year, Matt had tweaked and expanded it to incorporate much of the amazing SAMNet content. Subscribers with mobile phones could install iBlink and access radio broadcasts, newspapers, podcasts, and thousands of movies, TV programs, and documentaries with description (audio only, no video, thus only useful to the intended blind audience). An Android version was added in 2011 and Campbell worked on that as well.

DocuScan Plus

When he launched FreedomBox 2.0 in 2002, Matt Campbell had incorporated a basic scanning program with optical character recognition. In 2010, the basic program, now called DocuScan Plus, was improved dramatically and continues to be an integral component of the software.

In 2011, he improved DocuScan Plus further and, over the next four years, worked on enhancing various features within System Access and SAMNet and both versions of iBlink. Finally, as Campbellsummarizes: “In 2016, we unified iBlink and SAMNet into what is now called Sero, with mostly consistent functionality across Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, and basic functionality on Apple TV. In 2017, we introduced the Sero skill for Alexa.”

Moving On

Serotek had flourished, but times were changing. Mike Calvo stepped down in 2013, and his business partner, Michael Fox, became ill. Matt Campbell was still plugging away, but there was nothing bright and new on the horizon.

Then, one day, Calvo called Campbell from Cuba and demanded that he look at a job posting. “He woke me up,” Matt recalls and, essentially, “ordered me to apply.”

The job posting was with Microsoft. Just a few months later, Matt Campbell was moving from Wichita, Kansas, to Washington state, where he would serve as Microsoft’s only visually impaired developer on the Windows Accessibility Team.

Working on Narrator for Windows was a joy and an honor for Campbell. He worked in an office where developers worked together, where there was plenty of mutual respect, camaraderie, and acceptance of people with disabilities. While Matt was the only developer with low vision, he worked alongside many other talented blind and low vision people on the Microsoft team. With the arrival of COVID-19, of course, the collegial environment was somewhat diminished, as Matt and others began working in quarantine from their own apartments. Still, he says, technology made it easy for him to do what he needed to do, getting groceries and other services delivered.

Meanwhile, some exciting new ideas were emerging as Calvo and Campbell, now friends for 20 years, brainstormed solutions to meet the current needs of blind and low vision people. How can blind people access needed documents from websites that are inaccessible? How can students and employees working from home access the slides presented visually for screen sharing by teachers and team leaders?

Solving those and other problems led to the formation of an entirely new company: Pneuma Solutions.

Campbell was happy at Microsoft, but felt he’d accomplished his mission there and was ready to go home to Kansas. No little red shoes, but he did go home, moved in to a new apartment, plugged in his keyboard, and is now throwing all his ingenuity and energy into the products of Pneuma Solutions.

The “boy genius” is no longer a boy, but the genius component is still flourishing. And the blind guy, now Chief Technology Officer, is using his talent to benefit other blind people everywhere.

Note: In this AccessWorld article we’ll take a close look at the current work of Matt Campbell and the new company’s flagship product.

This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.

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Deborah Kendrick

There are at least a thousand people who still depend daily on the email, web browsing, and voluminous amounts of content available through a 20-year-old company that has changed its name a little too often, but never its commitment to service. You may have once known it as FreedomBox, or, later, Serotek. Now, the charismatic blind guy who dreamed that company into existence and the colleague he affectionately dubbed “boy genius” are back as cofounders of a brand-new organization: Pneuma Solutions. They’re bringing the Serotek services on board to be sure those long, loyal customers suffer no abandonment, which is commendable, but perhaps even more exciting are the new products they are rolling out during this pandemic.

Meet the Co-Founders

20 years ago, the company that would become best known as Serotek was launched by Mike Calvo. Much of its success was credited to its brilliant software developer, Matt Campbell. First, there was FreedomBox, later called System Access. There was SAMNet, an amazing smorgasbord of online content, DocuScan Plus (OCR cloud-based software for scanning paper documents), and the list goes on.

In 2013, Mike Calvo left the company to follow a variety of other pursuits, both personal and professional. He helped get technology into the hands of blind people in less privileged countries, He helped promote the belief that accessibility is a right in multiple countries and languages, and he even met his now wife while hanging out in Cuba.

Meanwhile, Matt Campbell kept the fires burning under all of the vital software components comprising Serotek, such as the Sero app for iOS and Android, System Access, SamNet, and DocuScan Plus, but he, too, eventually went off in another direction. For three years, Campbell hung his professional hat (or keyboard?) at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. He is credited with many of the accessibility leaps and bounds made by Microsoft’s Narrator for Windows, which can now hold its own among third-party screen readers. While he had many colleagues and friends at Microsoft who are also blind or low vision, Campbell was the only visually impaired developer on the Windows Accessibility Team. His personal and professional experience, played a role in giving something worthwhile to blind consumers everywhere.

After three years, however, Campbell felt that his mission was accomplished. Campbell and his longtime friend and colleague, Mike Calvo, wanted to solve new problems in the tech arena. Consequently, a new mission and a little bit of homesickness found Campbell packing his bags at the end of 2020 and moving back to Kansas. More significantly for AccessWorld readers, he and Calvo are now co-founders of the new company, Pneuma Solutions.

Accessing Online Documents with Scribe

Any blind or low vision person who spends a fair amount of time online knows the frustration of researching a topic and running up against that wall of inaccessibility when the needed document doesn’t translate. Pneuma Solutions has developed a tool called Scribe that uses what they call Augmented Document Remediation to convert inaccessible online documents to accessible information. With a 96- percent accuracy rate, they can convert documents to a variety of languages and a variety of file formats, including braille, large print, rtf, mp3, epub, pdf, and more. Do you struggle with independently accessing and reviewing your medical records or tax documents? Have you been excluded when your new employer handed you the employee handbook or longtime employer updated employee policies? Usually, all of these and many other kinds of essential personal information that our sighted peers take for granted can be accessed in various online formats, documentation that Is often not accessible if you are blind or low vision.

Pneuma Solutions is reaching out to hospitals, universities, government agencies, and corporations to render such documentation readable for all. With Scribe, inaccessible documentation can be converted to a format you can read.

Recognizing the additional strain placed on blind and low vision students with the shift to online learning imposed by the pandemic, Calvo and Campbell began offering Scribe for Education as a free service to all K-12 students and teachers back in May 2020. Now, instructional materials of all kinds that are in inaccessible PDF or other formats can be converted to the format of your choice. At this point, some 50 organizations have taken advantage of the service. Calvo says that word of mouth has been the major means of advertising, so growth is steady but not necessarily fast.

Scribe for Meetings

The most exciting development to emerge from Pneuma Solutions thus far also arose out of needs born of the pandemic. Online learning and online meetings have been around for decades, but with the quarantines and shutdowns prompted by the spread of COVID-19, the numbers of people studying, working, and planning in online virtual meeting rooms has exploded.

Students of all ages, from preschool to graduate school, are attending class from home, completing lessons online, and gathering with teachers and peers in virtual online groups. Bankers, lawyers, rehabilitation professionals, software developers and more are also working from home, attending training sessions, presentations, and meetings in virtual environments.

For the most part, meeting via Zoom Cloud Meetings works well for blind people with even a modest amount of tech savvy. With an iPhone or Android app or from your Windows or Mac computer, you can join a meeting, raise your hand, mute and unmute yourself, change whether your peers see you or your surroundings, and find out who else is in the virtual room. Where equality has stopped, however, is when a teacher, or team leader is presenting information on the screen as part of the meeting.

Pneuma Solutions has developed a tool that makes content shared onscreen accessible. With Scribe for Meetings, a blind meeting participant can access the same information in real time as the sighted participants who see it on the screen. The presenter simply uploads the presentation beforehand and provides a link to participants with visual impairments. T hat link becomes live at the meeting’s outset, and a completely accessible, navigable version is right there, available to review at your own pace along with sighted classmates or coworkers.

If the presenter hasn’t sent you a link, you can go to the Scribe for Meetings site and enter your Zoom invitation link to locate the correct file. What Pneuma calls the Scribe Bot joins the Zoom meeting or webinar as an additional participant, synchronizing your accessible content with the images being shared on the screen. If the presenter jumps around — from Slide 1 to Slide 5 to Slide 6 and back again, for example— the Scribe Bot will keep pace, showing you the same slide in your chosen accessible format.

Scribe for Meetings can make presentations available in the format of your choice—braille, large print, pdf, epub, etc. and is multilingual as well. Like Scribe for Education, all of the conversion is performed on demand, so that if your teacher or employer isn’t the type who plans weeks in advance, you will still have an equal spot at the virtual table. Presentations can be uploaded to the Scribe for Meetings site just minutes before the meeting time and the accessible files will be available.

Rather than charging consumers, Calvo and Campbell are marketing Scribe for Meetings by demonstrating it to universities, corporations, and government agencies. If, for example, you are a student at a state university and your university buys into Scribe for Meetings, every professor and employee of that university can use Scribe for Meetings to make presentations accessible. As long as the PowerPoint deck is uploaded to Scribe for Meetings, you will get a link to those documents to read in real time with your access technology and to do so in tandem with your fellow meeting attendees.

At this point, Scribe for Meetings is only accessible for Zoom Cloud Meetings and webinars, but plans are under way for it to be available for use with Microsoft Teams and other platforms as well.

For the last few months, Calvo and Campbell have been conducting demonstrations for universities and a few companies, tweaking the machine intelligence along the way, and making the product better. Pricing is available at a variety of levels, with free sessions offered to agencies specifically serving people with visual disabilities.

Once an organization registers with Pneuma Solutions, the Scribe for Meetings product is immediately available to everyone for every meeting within that organization. To help spread the word and bring Scribe for Meetings into the online meetings that matter most to you, Pneuma Solutions has developed downloadable tools to help consumers reach out to specific leaders. Called the Self-Advocacy Kit, this dedicated area of the Pneuma Solutions web site offers letters to suit a variety of needs. If you want your boss, your professor, your pastor, or your board president to begin using Scribe for Meetings in order to provide you with equal access during Zoom and other online meetings, you can download an already formatted letter matching your particular situation, fill in the particular names, and send it off.

For organizations serving blind and visually impaired consumers, Scribe for Meetings is free. For others, the cost will be $99 per webinar or a variety subscription-style packages that can provide accessible meetings throughout an organization for an affordable monthly fee. Although the product is available now, they expect to be out of beta and in full service mode by April.

And Tomorrow?

Dreamers like Mike Calvo and Matt Campbell don’t just get one idea and relax. From FreedomBox to System Access to DocuScan, Sero, RIM, Scribe, and Scribe for Meetings, they just keep contemplating the problems they and other blind individuals face and then look at ways to solve them. Today, the focus is Augmented Document Mediation, but what the blind community really needs, they say, is Augmented Media Remediation.

“Eventually,” Calvo explains, “we hope we can offer immediate description for all those YouTube videos, in the same way that we can now offer immediate conversion of documents.” Our complete independence and access to content and images, he says, lies in teaching machines to do the work. “As long as we blind consumers have to depend on humans to do it, we’ll never have full access. We’ll never have real time access until machines can do it.”

Of course, someone has to teach the machines. So far, the dreamers and doers at Pneuma Solutions, Mike Calvo and Matt Campbell, look pretty promising for filling that role.

This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.

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Steve Kelley

Have you considered cutting the cable cord? Replacing the cable box and all the channels that came with the "bundle," many of which you don’t really watch anyway, with various Internet streaming services? It sounds like a great idea, one that will reduce the monthly cable bill. But it turns out that by the time you put it all together—the movies, local programming, sports, etc. you may reach the cost of the original cable service. Or just get so bewildered by it all that you’re ready to tie the cord back together again.

YouTube TV may offer a quick, economical solution. For a flat rate of $65 a month, YouTube TV offers 85 broadcast and program networks. There's no contract, you pay by the month, and a 7- or 14- day free trial lets you check out the networks and programming offered and the accessibility features on your device.

Getting Started

Getting started was relatively simple from tv.youtube.com using an existing Google username and password. After logging in, a prompt appeared for the 14-day free trial and a link to select additional add-ons to the basic $65 package. Add-ons ranged from $3/month for Curiosity Stream to $14.99/month for HBO Max with over 11 other premium services in between.

Once you’re registered, YouTube TV is available wherever you have access to high-speed internet, so you can dump the cable box and the associated bill, and just keep the high-speed internet. YouTube TV is available through a web browser, or an app on the computer, smartphone, or tablet. You can also download an app for your Apple TV or another Smart TVs that has internet access. Regardless of which device you’re using, the user interface has many of the same elements, so it’s easy to pick up another device and find what you’re looking for.

Finding Your Programs

Regardless of device, the three main sections are: Home, Library, and Live. The Home page features new shows, movies, and add-ons. The Library page includes shows that you’ve added, purchased, or recorded for viewing at a later time. The Live page is a schedule of what is currently playing on each network and a schedule of what’s coming up next. It appears in a grid pattern with each network appearing as a row going across the columns showing the time and name of the various programs.

From the Live page, a program can be viewed by selecting it from the grid and viewing it as a live stream or adding it to the Library as a recorded selection that can be accessed later from the Library.

App Accessibility

For this review, I accessed YouTube TV from the web using the Chrome browser, on an Android phone using the YouTube TV app downloaded from the Google Play Store, and on an Apple TV using an app downloaded from the app store. All of the apps were free. When opening YouTube TV from both the web and the Apple TV, a preview immediately began playing, which made it difficult to hear the screen readers—Narrator on Windows, and VoiceOver on the Apple TV. As I became more familiar with the layout, this became less of an issue, but I never discovered a way to turn off the preview volume. It was a relief to find no preview playing when the app opened on the Android phone, which made it easier to navigate with TalkBack.

The overall layout on the wider screen devices—the PC and the Apple TV—offered a much better view of the upcoming schedule visually and with a screen reader. Once a network, like PBS, was selected, tabbing or swiping to the right moved across the programming for the next several hours. On the Android app, the listing appeared to be a single column of only what was currently being broadcast, and swiping to the right just took you down the list to the next network.

The list of networks in the Live mode can be customized in each of the interfaces, and each device seems to offer different levels of customization. For example, the Apple TV allowed shows to be sorted A-Z, or by category—drama, news, etc. On the Android, rarely used networks can be removed, and you can reposition networks in an Edit mode, by dragging them within the list. This feature, however, did not work with TalkBack.

These differences in features were also found in other areas. For example, a terrific feature on the Apple TV app and the web interface is the ability to customize the closed captioning. The font size can be increased, color and transparency can be altered, etc. On the Android app, it appears that closed captioning may be turned off or on but it is set to a default font size, in white letters.

Audio Description

Some stations support audio description, and this appears to be more a function of the station than YouTube TV. For an updated list of audio described programming, check out the Guide to Accessing YouTube TV’s Audio Description, an appendix to the Audio Description Project. If audio description is available on a station or program on one device, it also seems to be available on YouTube TV across platforms. This too varies slightly across devices. With a program streaming, opening the menu for the program offers options like closed captioning, and an audio menu. By default, the audio is on Primary. Switching to Secondary turns on audio description for those services and programs that support it. On the Apple TV app and the web interface, turning on the Secondary audio for one station did not change it across all stations; each one had to be turned on individually. On the Android app, however, turning Secondary audio on for one station seems to switch it on for all of them. On the Android app, Secondary audio, once turned on, will remain on if the app is closed and reopened. According to the Guide to Accessing YouTube TV’s Audio Description, if a program has audio description, this is also recorded when the program is recorded in the Library and is available during playback. It would be really helpful if one of the sorting options in the Live mode included the ability to sort together all the programming that offered audio description, however this is not currently one of the categories.

Simple DVR Recording

One of the great options on YouTube TV is a simple-to-use DVR feature that enables programs to be recorded and saved in the Library. Just pick the individual broadcast or select the series. These recordings are then stored in the Library where they can be watched, resaved, or deleted after watching. Recordings do not take up space on the user’s device. They are saved in the YouTube TV cloud so as long as you have access to the internet and a current user account, you can access the recordings in the Library. One of the best features here is that there is no limit to storage, and most programs can be saved for up to 9 months assuming the subscription is maintained during that time.

Voice Commands with YouTube TV

As a Google product, YouTube TV can work with the Google Assistant to make it respond to voice commands such as, “Hey Google, play the latest episode of 'Grey's Anatomy' on YouTube TV,” or “Play MSNBC on YouTube TV.” This feature was not set up during this review, so I was unable to test it. For complete instructions, check out Play YouTube TV using your speaker or display & Chromecast from Google Support.

Is it Right for You?

Overall, YouTube TV’s features appeared to be mostly accessible over the three devices I tested. Closed captioning had great features on both the web and AppleTV app. Audio description was supported and easy to find in the settings when it was available on the programming. For the infrequent TV or movie watcher, the 85 channels and the $65-a-month subscription rate may not be the best option. If you just live on Hulu and Netflix programming, it will be cheaper to just subscribe to those individually. For TV and movie watchers looking for more channel surfing, YouTube TV may be a great, simple, cost-saving alternative, and it works on virtually any device you might have. It’s also hard to beat a 14-day free trial to check it out!

This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.

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Jamie Pauls

On March 17, 2020, I knew that I would not be working at the school where I do music therapy for a few weeks. I had no idea that COVID-19 would change all our lives, and that I wouldn't set foot in the school again until June, and then only for a couple weeks. I also had no way of knowing that I wouldn't be going to church or home Bible study groups for many months.

Up until the spring of last year, none of my sighted friends used the word "Zoom" when talking about attending a business meeting, and Zoom sure wasn't a verb used when talking about teleconferencing in the same way that Google is a verb that denotes internet searching. I felt a bit cocky when the connection group my wife and I were a part of started using Zoom to conduct weekly Bible studies. I had a leg up on my people. I already had a good idea how to use the program.

I didn't feel so cocky when our church's worship team decided to conduct their weekly Bible studies using Google Meet. Immediately, my blood pressure went up a little. How accessible would it be to me, a screen reader user? Not wanting to ask the team to change to Zoom on my account before at least trying Meet, I approached my first Bible study with trepidation. I was pleased to discover that, in fact, Meet was quite accessible with either JAWS or NVDA. Below, you will find a few thoughts I have gathered after using Google Meet over the course of the past year or so.

Joining a Meeting With Google Meet

Google Meet on the PC is basically a web application. Just click on a link provided by the meeting organizer, and you are taken to a page where you can join the meeting. You are able to see who is already in attendance, and participating is a simple matter of activating the Join button. Much like other teleconferencing programs, the presenter must admit you into the meeting room. Your screen reader should announce pertinent information such as the fact that your microphone and camera are enabled once you are in the meeting.

Their are a few hotkeys you can use to do things like mute or unmute your microphone and turn your camera on and off. Some actions like leaving a meeting don't have associated hotkeys, but the webpage where your meeting takes place is pretty clean, and it's not hard to find the controls you need in order to complete a task. I have not tried Google Meet on a Mac, but I can't imagine that the process would be any more difficult than on a PC. I have recently discovered that the Meet app for my iPhone is an absolute pleasure to use. The sound quality on PC and iPhone is excellent. I can't speak to video quality, but none of my sighted friends seem to complain. On the iPhone, VoiceOver announces who is speaking as different people talk in the meeting, something I rather like.

Hosting a Meeting on Google Meet

It couldn't be easier to get up and running as a meeting host with Google Meet. If you already have a Google account, and who doesn't, just sign in and you're good to go. You can schedule a meeting and add it to Google calendar, or simply create a meeting that can be started at any time. Pass the link to anyone you want to meet with, start the meeting, and wait for them to join. A sound plays and your screen reader will tell you when someone wants to join your meeting. Simply activate the Admit button and they are in. While a meeting is running, you can view meeting participants, mute their audio, and any number of other useful things.

One thing I have not been able to figure out how to do successfully is share my screen complete with audio and video. As a music therapist doing teletherapy, this is an important function of my job. For me, the Microsoft Edge browser either locked up, or content just wouldn't share. It could very well be that this is a problem on my end. I have found WebEx to also not be reliable when it comes to screen sharing. For this reason, I have switched all of my therapy sessions to Zoom.

Another thing I can't quite get the hang of is chatting with people in a Google Meet session. I started a meeting on my PC and then joined the meeting from my iPhone. I was able to send a chat with no problem, but my phone never received the chat. Perhaps if I had tried sending a message to someone else, it would have worked.

The Bottom Line

If you need a free, simple solution for getting together for a family chat or simple meeting, Google Meet should do the trick. The Windows PC web application and iPhone app work great with minimal fuss. Control D toggles your microphone on and off, and Control E does the same for your camera. Other controls that don't have hotkeys assigned to them are easy enough to find on the uncluttered screen.

If you need to share content with others, you might want to seriously think about using a program like Zoom, although others may have work-arounds for the difficulties I encountered when trying to share my screen and chat with others in a meeting. Google is committed to making its products accessible to blind and visually impaired users, so I am confident that this teleconferencing program will improve over time. I plan to keep this application around in my arsenal of useful tools for communicating with others.

One issue that I encountered that was not accessibility specific, was that in some cases I could not hear the audio of others when I joined a meeting. This most often happened if I muted my microphone in the web app before joining a meeting and when using a bluetooth headset while using the iOS app.

For more about the accessibility of the major virtual meeting platforms, this article discusses Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams from a blind person's point of view. There is a lot of great content in this article, including an extensive list of keyboard commands for all three programs.

Although there appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel where this pandemic is concerned, it is probably safe to say that we have a long way to go. It is also safe to assume that we will do a lot more virtual learning and collaborating in the months and even years to come. As blind users of mainstream technology, it is necessary and even desirable that we make ourselves familiar with the same technology that our sighted counterparts are using. It is also important to let the developers of teleconferencing software know what works and what doesn't as far as access technology for the blind is concerned. They can't fix it if they don't know it's broken.

Like a lot of things, the longer you use a particular piece of technology, the easier it becomes. When I first started using WebEx, I didn't think I would ever get comfortable with it. Over time, my confidence grew and I became a more efficient WebEx user. In the case of Zoom, scripts for JAWS and add-ons for NVDA made the program even more usable than it already was. It's likely that a combination of improvements from Google, sharing of ideas among the blind community, and even screen reader configuration files will make Google Meet a go-to teleconferencing option for more blind people in the future.

What are your thoughts on teleconferencing today? Have you found the process intimidating, or has it leveled the playing field for you as a blind person? We would love to hear your thoughts. Comment on this article through the link below to share your experiences, both good and bad, with teleconferencing. We look forward to hearing from you!

This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.

Comment on this article.

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Janet Ingber

Apple Fitness+, a subscription streaming service that offers a wide variety of exercise workouts, was launched in January 2021 after much anticipation. Apple Fitness+ integrates with your Apple Watch Series 3 or later, to automatically start and track your Fitness+ workouts.

In large type at the top of the Apple Fitness+ website, it says, “A new fitness experience for everyone, powered by Apple Watch. World-class workouts by the world’s best trainers. New workouts added every week.” But, in my opinion, it may not be for everyone.

For this article I used an Apple Watch Series 6 and watchOS 7.3. I also used an iPhone X with iOS 14.4. I work out on a regular basis usually doing strength training including weights, and core. I completed many Fitness+ workouts in the Strength, Core, HIIT (high-intensity interval training), Yoga, and Mindful Cooldown categories. I did all the beginner classes and many of the advanced.

Workout Presentation

The workouts in Apple Fitness+ are videos. People who are low vision might be able to see what is on the screen. Unfortunately, none of the workouts are audio only. Be aware that there are many visual references during many workouts. Not all moves are clearly explained. There are usually additional trainers in the background who do modified versions of the same exercise, but the modifications are frequently not described. While the workout is playing, you do not have the ability to rewind to repeat what was said.

Apple Fitness+ will make trainer and workout recommendations for you. If you subscribe to Apple Music, playlists that the trainer uses for workouts can be downloaded.

Workout Categories

Apple Fitness+ offers ten types of workout. They are:

• Treadmill Walk
• Treadmill Run
• HIIT
• Rowing
• Dance
• Cycling
• Yoga
• Core
• Strength
• Mindful Cooldown

Another Fitness+ feature is Time to Walk. According to Apple, “Episodes feature some of the world’s most interesting people who share inspiring stories, photos and music as you join them on a walk.” Walks are between 25 and 40 minutes and are meant to be done outside, with your Apple watch and Bluetooth headphones.

Requirements

Apple Fitness+ requires Apple Watch Series 3 or later with watchOS 7.2 or later. The app is only available on the iPhone 6s or later with iOS 14.3 or later, iPad with iPadOS 14.3 or later, or Apple TV with tvOS 14.3 or later.

Cost

If you purchase an Apple Watch, you get three months of Fitness+ free. If you already have a supported Apple Watch Series 3 or later, you can get a free one-month trial. Information about these options can be found on the Apple Fitness + homepage. If you decide to subscribe, Apple Fitness+ is $9.99 per month or $79.99 for one year.

Installing Fitness+

If you are using an iPhone, Fitness+ will become the middle tab of the Fitness app once you subscribe or start your free trial. If you use an iPad, Fitness+ needs to be downloaded from the App Store. It is also available for Apple TV. It is not available for the Mac.

What’s on the Screen

The screens in Fitness+ contain a lot of information, but everything is uncluttered and easy to navigate.

When the Home screen loads, the first option is Account Settings. Information in this section includes your name, email address associated with your Apple ID, and options to redeem a gift card or send one by email.

Flicking right brings you to the list of workouts. In order they are: HIIT, Yoga, Core, Strength, Treadmill, Cycling, Rowing, Dance, and Mindful Cooldown. Treadmill Run and Walk are not listed separately, but when a treadmill workout is selected, there will be options for Run and Walk.

Next are the Time to Walk audio workouts. From here, you can start using headings navigation to discover recommendations and new workouts. Under some headings is a Show All option. Activating it brings up a list of all choices in the category.

The first heading is More of What You Do. Below this heading are recommendations based on previous workouts. The next heading is Try Something New. In this section, Apple Fitness+ suggested different trainers for me to try. For example, I completed many core workouts and different core trainers were suggested.

The next heading is New This Week. Below the heading is a Show All button. Even without activating the button there was an extensive list. Since February is Black History Month, there was a list of workouts “inspired by black excellence.”

The next heading is called For Beginners. Just below the heading is a button labeled “Workouts to get started, 7 episodes.” There are 2 strength workouts, 2 HIIT workouts, 2 yoga workouts, and 1 core workout. For the strength, HIIT, and yoga workouts, the first workout is a brief introduction and the second is a longer workout.

Next is a different trainer’s weekly picks followed by headings for Popular and Trainers. The final category is Simple and Quick.

For Beginners

If you are new to exercise or have not worked out recently, this is a good place to start. The trainers are very welcoming. Unfortunately, parts of some videos are not described at all or they are not described clearly enough if you cannot see the screen. There are trainers doing modifications of the movements, but what they are doing isn’t clearly described most of the time.

Access the beginner workouts by using headings navigation to get to the For Beginners heading. Flick right and VoiceOver says, “Workouts to Get Started, 7 Episodes.” Select this option.

There is a brief film to watch on the next screen. It features trainers who do beginner workouts. They are very enthusiastic and supportive. Next is the list of workouts. Each one contains the title, trainer, the workout number, an option to add this to your workouts, length of the workout, and music played. Once a workout is completed, it will be at the bottom of the workout’s listing.

Choosing More Advanced Workouts

Apple music has many workouts and many ways to make a selection. You can choose a workout from one of the lists on the home screen. You could also select one of the categories at the top of the screen and then narrow your choice. Workouts can be sorted by type, trainer, activity, length, and music.

Once a category is chosen, the next screen will have two different ways to select a workout: Filter and Sort. In addition, there will be a list of workout suggestions from the category. If Filter is chosen, the new screen will load with three different subcategories: Trainer, Time, and Music. For any trainer, time length, and music not available in the Core category, VoiceOver will say “Dimmed” next to the option. Once selections are made, select the Done button near the top of the screen.

With the Sort option, you can sort by either recently added workouts, trainer, time length or music. Only workouts that meet your search criteria are displayed.

The Workout Screens

No matter how you choose a workout, the first screen will have a More button with options including Share and Save Workout. Next is the name of the workout and the trainer’s name. Selecting the name brings up a short biography and a list of other workouts done by the trainer. Next is a Let’s Go button and a Preview button. The Preview button plays a short segment of the class. Next is a brief description of the class. Any equipment needed will be mentioned in this section but moves are not mentioned. There is no estimate of calories burned. At the end is a list of songs played.

Start Your Workout

When you are ready to begin, select the Let’s Go button. Your Apple Watch will open the Workout app and you can press Play.

The screen will have the following information: elapsed time, heart rate, kilocalories used, description of activity rings, a Done button, volume, a Play button, media selection, controls, time elapsed, and time remaining. Media selection is for subtitles, closed captioning, and other languages. Controls lets you select which metrics you want on the screen. Verbal step-by-step instructions are not given for each exercise. There is no list of which exercises will be done.

As you do your workout, VoiceOver will give some feedback, depending on what you are doing. For example, if you do an exercise for thirty seconds, VoiceOver may say when your timer is done. It told me when I closed my activity ring.

Once the workout is over, activate the Done button on your device and on your Apple Watch.

Conclusion

Because of Apple’s commitment to accessibility, I was eager to try Apple Fitness+. I was disappointed that Apple Fitness+ didn’t come with better descriptions of exercises during a workout. Ideally, I would prefer a separate description track playing along with the workout, explaining exercises when necessary. Audio ducking would let a blind user hear the exercise description and still follow along while the trainer spoke. Maybe they could have a companion text or audio file to each workout, describing how to do each exercise.

Despite these accessibility issues, Apple Fitness+ may be right for you. Apple has great music and the instructors are very welcoming. If you have access to a treadmill, cycle, or rower, check out those workouts.

This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.

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