Episode Notes
The rise of artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm over the past two years, and it has the potential to have an enormous impact for people who are blind or have low vision. In this episode of AccessWorld, our hosts Tony and Aaron offer a rundown on what’s in the latest online issue of AccessWorld Magazine, which takes its own deep dive into several related A.I. areas, and they then dive even deeper into the AFB Leadership Conference, which takes place Sept. 23rd - 25th in Minneapolis. This year’s #AFBLC focuses on Leading in the Digital Age, and one of the tracks will focus specifically on the rise of A.I. and its impact across our community. There’s still time to register and be part of the big event.
About AccessWorld
AccessWorld is a production of the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB). Tony Stephens leads communications for AFB, and Aaron Preece is the editor-in-chief of AccessWorld Magazine, an online publication that celebrates its 25th anniversary this year promoting digital inclusion and accessibility. Aaron Preece is editor-in-chief of AccessWorld, and Tony Stephens leads communications for AFB.
About AFB
Founded in 1921, the American Foundation for the Blind creates equal opportunities and expands possibilities for people who are blind, deafblind, or have low vision through advocacy, thought leadership, and strategic partnerships. In addition to publishing AccessWorld and the Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness (JVIB), AFB is also the proud steward of the Helen Keller Archive, which is available on the AFB website at www.afb.org.
AccessWorld Podcast, Episode 12 Transcript
A transcript for the episode is provided below and are now also available through the Apple Podcasts app.
AI Transcription by REV.COM.
INTRO MUSIC WITH SOUND OF BRAILLE KEYS TYPING THREE DISTINCTIVE CLICKS.
FEMALE VOICE 1: AFB…
GERMAN SHEPERD BARKS FOLLOWED BY THE SOUND OF A TYPEWRITER CARRAGE RETURN.
Female Voice 2: You are listening to Access World, a podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility. Access World is a production of the American Foundation for the Blind. Learn more at www.afb.org/aw
Tony: And welcome back everybody to another exciting episode of the Access World podcast. The podcast on digital inclusion and accessibility from the American Foundation for the Blind. I am one of your co-hosts. Tony Stevens, assistant vice president for communications with a FB and joined with me is the editor in chief himself for Access World. Mr. Aaron Priest, happy end of summer. Aaron,
Aaron: Same to you. How's it going?
Tony: It is going well. We're back like Barbie back, which is exciting. I think since our last podcast recording, we've had Barbie mania here at A FB, which has been fantastic. We had the launch at the end of July for folks that haven't heard about The Blind Barbie, something that a FB worked on and it's been exciting. Everybody's already talking about what they're going to get for Christmas shopping this early in the year, which is neat
Aaron:: And it's amazing how massive of an impact it was. Just hearing the things about the amount of people seeing it on Twitter and the fact that it's sold out at Walmart, it seems like it was a smash hit from what I heard.
Tony: Yeah, it was fantastic. For folks that maybe don't know a FB, even before the Barbie movie came out last summer in 23, we had been engaged with Mattel and they approached us about this possibility for Blind Barbie as part of their fashionista line, which is a accessible inclusive line of their dolls that as part of the Barbie business, if you will, and it was something that we worked a lot on. A lot of folks will, if you haven't experienced it all already, she has a white cane, she has sunglasses. That's an optional, since not everybody that's blind or low vision uses sunglasses. Some of us do, I do, but not everybody does. So she can also wear them fashionably on top of her head or you can take them off and she's a can user. There's contracted braille UEB on the box. So she's a well read braille user herself, and it's just been neat. But a lot of the work that we did actually at A FB too as well was on the backend for accessibility to make sure the whole marketing launch and everything like that would be accessible. So it was a nice opportunity for us to dive into something that has really had a global impact and it's been fun. So yeah, Barbie's all around now, which is fun. I have two boys, never raised with Barbie. I don't know if you were a Barbie fan growing up, Aaron or not
Aaron:: Knew Bailey, anything about it personally,
Tony: Same here. So my older sister had some, so I just remember that. But it is been fun to just hear the exciting stories from kids really around the world. It was really a global sort of impact from Australia to United Kingdom and here in the States. So yeah, so folks check that on our website, just all the stuff about Barbie. But it was one of the things we do is to help them not just with the advising and giving advice on the branding and the look and how she should use the cane and all these other tips and advice that our research team, which was comprised of women researchers themselves who are blind, which was nice in that inclusion sense, but also too just with the accessibility work that we did teaching them about alt tagging best practices and audio description and stuff. So exciting. So our summer's been busy here at a FP and Busy for you as well with the Access World issue that just dropped a couple of weeks ago. So that's now our quarterly issue for the August issue of Access World is now afb.org/aw. So tell us a little bit, Aaron, about what is in the most recent issue of Access world this quarter.
Aaron:: So for our August issue, pretty large issue this time and we primarily focused on AI this time. So several articles on ai. I personally wrote an article on basically using AI for accessibility. We've talked a lot and I'm sure people are aware of things like the Be My Eyes, ai, where you can take pictures and how good those images are and how detailed you can get with getting information from the ai. But what I wanted to talk about for this issue was using AI on your computer for accessibility and not just in the real world. So specifically how you can use it to make data more accessible. So one thing I've discovered recently, and that's been a major lifesaver and game changer for me is you can use ai and specifically I use the GPT-4 oh is the one I personally use most frequently, but you can use GPT or AI to improve PDF accessibility.
Aaron:: So if you have a PDF and it's not been tagged, so it's just one giant stream of text and especially if it's got tables and other kinds of data in it, it's hard to read. You can just copy the text of that PDF out and paste it into the AI and it can restructure that into HTML or some other format that's easier to use and you can even download it that way compared to there's PDF converters and that sort of thing. But a lot of times they're kind of hit or miss and to be honest, sometimes if you go online they're a little on the shady side. It's like why are you offering this for free? What are you? So being able to do that with AI is useful and just being able to have that conversation with the AI as you're working through it.
Aaron: Like okay, you tell it at least with GPT, it only generates so much at a time. So you generate, it goes through and then it has a continue generating or whatever. So you throw the PDF in and it's not doing it quite how you want it. So then you can say, okay, this is good, but change this to this and this and it will be able to take that from the top and then redo the other PDF. But outside of that, just taking any kind of images and especially data really data heavy images. So I'm thinking things like charts and graphs and stuff like that. There's sometimes can be made accessible or described, but you can get so much more detail with an AI and you can also have it help you either restructure the data in a way that's easier for you to understand and read through or if you have ideas of how you want to analyze the data, you can ask the AI to tell you things about the data.
Aaron:: And so the example in the article I give is say you've got a chart and it's got a graph and there's two data points where it's holidays throughout the year and a restaurant revenue. And so you can ask when do basically what correlations are there, does the revenue rise or fall on these holidays and which holidays does it rise, which holidays does it fall? Is there no correlation? So if you have ideas like that about the data after you've looked at the main data, you don't necessarily want to rely on it to analyze things for you, but if you have an idea of what you want to analyze, you can do that. And just in general, I personally, if it's something you could give to a site a person and have them basically create something in text, you can do it With ai, I've really ran into very few, very few blockers or limits with what I can do with AI and image to text.
Tony: How's the learning curve been in terms of getting it onto computers and trying to integrate it in? Is it a seamless process? Are there a few steps or do you think we're still in sort of that early you have to do two or three things to get it to do what you want it to do versus when you would watch Iron Man with Robert Downey Jr. He would just talk to his smart assistant. That was the dreams of what maybe we're getting closer to each day.
Aaron:: It's kind of a mix because if you look at a lot of what people talk about and there's courses for prompt engineering and that sort of thing, and you can get crazy with the symbols you use and the way you structure and give it commands and all that sort of thing. I personally have not, especially now with GT four and GPT-4 oh especially and I'm sure with the latest versions of Gemini and Llama and some of the others, Claude, I think they're all kind of getting this way where you could just talk to it like you talk to a person. So if it's something you could tell an intern, you can kind of tell the ai, you might have to figure out why is it. There was a couple of times where I was trying to get it to output in a format and it wouldn't do it right.
Aaron:: And I had to figure out what language to use to get it to actually output the format I wanted because it just wasn't understanding. I think it was math or something and I was like, help me with this equation, but then all the equations were just blank and so like, okay, something's wrong here. So I eventually figured out I could tell it, do this in plain text and write out the words of the equation that you're doing and that I could finally see. So you'll run into little weird quirks like that, but you don't really necessarily need prompt engineering knowledge to figure it out. It's more of a, you can use plain language and treat it like you would a person to some degree and there's a little bit of troubleshooting, but it's a lot closer to just talking to a person than I think we'd like to realize.
Tony: We're not at Jarvis yet from Ironman,
Aaron: But we're a lot closer than we think. Yeah, closer than you
Tony: Yeah, I picked up some of the meta Ray band glasses because why not look stylish in the summertime for twice the amount of money of Raybans, but it's worth it. And as much to say this isn't a commercial for RayBan or meta Facebook at all, but it's really surreal to just be able to talk No earbuds, they're just sit on your head and it uses the llama. You mentioned llama earlier, they use Llama, which is the backend sort of intelligent system platform that they're using their AI off of, but it's so surreal to have this very human sounding voice in the ether. It just kind of appears around you. It feels like it kind of comes from all sides of you stereo over your ears. It's just hanging over your shoulder just talking to you.
Tony: And you mentioned the prompts and I totally get that because one of the headaches I have with the meta glasses is you have to say, Hey meta. But then if you wanted to do a picture of anything, you have to say, look, and there's a lot of the reminds me of early days of coding, do this and then do this and do this, the series of syntax you have to use. But it is pretty cool because I remember we were talking on the podcast earlier in the year, just be my AI app, how descriptive it is now for describing not just an image but a scene. It's impressive what Llama can do and just describe it as scene.
Aaron:: Is it pretty solid about if you, because I always thought it would be nice to have that on your face versus trying to aim your phone. Just such a much more natural movement and just being able to look towards whatever you need to take a picture of or whatever. It's pretty good about reading and stuff like
Tony: That. You can point to something and say, what is that look and tell me what that says. And of all the things in front of it, it'll single that out and be able to read it to you
Aaron:: That
Tony: The menu. And I'll be like, what's this section here say?
Aaron:: That's very convenient.
Tony: So it is pretty neat. It has some limitations. One of the issues, and I know this is, I mean obviously tied to Facebook with the privacy issues. I remember when the auto alt tagging first came out was that 2016 at Facebook for images. The privacy was really scaled back. They don't want, it's a big concern about once we
Aaron:: Recognize people
Tony: All on Ether and Facebook obviously is taking this information, meta is taking this information for improving itself. But I can't look at my son and say, who is this? It says, sorry, I can't do that right now. In its voice. It says something like, that's something I can't do. But you can find ways to say, I can point to his shirt and say, what is this? And he just got back from a Big trip to Six Flags in New Jersey and it'll be like, describe. So he bought a T-shirt and it'll tell me what that image is. If I'm like, what is this image on the shirt? Then it'll tell me that. So it is figuring out the syntax of trying to say things, but it is still in this interesting space about the privacy with ai, which is one of the things we'll be wrestling with at our leadership conference later this month in September, which we will talk about shortly. But yeah, it's a cool function. It just feels so seamless, like you said earlier.
Aaron:: Yeah, it's one of those fields where we're kind of in the wild west of it right now and it's improving so quickly. It's one of those, it seems like technology in general, once the rapid growth before things plateau and we're in that rapid growth area right now for ai. So it's a cool time to be in at the beginning of the start of all this.
Tony: It is fun. It's like Marconi and the radio in the 1920s or something and 19 teens, but but hugely more transformative for our community. So what other stuff's in the issue this month or this quarter?
Aaron:: So in addition to the, we've got my AI article. Something I was very happy with is we've got a new author named James Brooks who's programming development. I don't know his exact title, but he's a professor, teaches development and programming and that sort of thing. So he did an article on a framework called React Native, and it's essentially a language or a modular, I'm the programmer myself, so I might be getting some of these terms wrong, but it's like a language that you can use to code cross platform, iOS and Android apps. I think using JavaScript, I'm pretty sure. And so it's a pretty popular because of that. And so what he did is he went through and found a lot of different areas where you can add accessibility specifically. He gave specific examples with code and how things can be used. So really went into the details of if you're trying to do this, here's how you can do it.
Aaron: Something I've really been wanting to put in access world is that sort of direct examples, direct accessibility examples and technical information. So it's a very technical article for developers. So that was cool. That's cool to have. And so if you're either use React native, it's a great resource if you're looking to make things accessible, make your apps accessible, or if you're looking for a language to use to, or I guess a framework in this case to make mobile apps consider React native. It's got a lot of accessibility features. So there's an article on that in there.
Tony: So
Aaron:: We have a couple of employment related articles. We've got an article on a low vision occupational therapist and how he does his job. And then we've got a book review. It's judge, yeah, judge Tattle got a review of his book, which sounds very cool. Definitely something I want to check out after reading.
Tony:
Aaron:: Yeah, it sounds really cool from the article. I've not read the book personally yet, but like you said, talks about his, especially because he lost his vision later in life it seems like. And so a lot of it's going through how he adapted to vision loss and the steps, the journey that that was, and also just about his career and about the field of law and things like that in addition.
Tony: Yeah, it's fascinating. Yeah. Awesome. Well, folks can check all that and more out at afp.org/a along with all the back issues for 23, 20.
Aaron:: 20 some years now. Yeah, 24 years volume 25 this year.
Tony: That's exciting. That's cool. So yeah, a quarter century.
Aaron: Yep.
Tony: Yeah, we should get a silver something in recognition. Yeah,
Aaron:: It's the Jubilee. Yeah.
Tony: Yeah, we'll definitely point that out at the A FB leadership conference, which is coming up later in September, which is also focusing on AI and all things digital inclusion and accessibility. We've got some exciting stuff on the horizon there. We'll switch gears and start talking a little bit about promoting that conference and some of the programs For folks that are going to come out, be sure to say hey to Aaron and I, we'll both be there and we're going to have an access world sort of set up at one of the exhibit tables and suppose can come by and find out things about access world and just our work in digital inclusion and accessibility. And you can also partake in a lot of the programs that are taking place. It's the theme for this year. We're in Minneapolis, which the motto I like to say for Minneapolis is Avant French for forward, and we're just thinking forward and coming out of the pandemic now four years, still crazy to believe. It seems like yesterday and it seems like a millennia go. I don't know if you feel that way.
Aaron:: Oh yeah, for sure. I've had to herm it up for the last four years.
Tony: I know for sure. But the reality of just how our world has completely pivoted, I mean that was Lightspeed into the digital age for sure. So the theme for this year's conference is leading in the digital age, and we're going to be taking a look at a lot of the things around digital accessibility, the rise of ai, and how that's going to impact us, where it stands with ethics around it. Our research team has been doing a lot of great work in ramping up research in the AI space for people with disabilities. It's the area that hasn't been looked at too much for people with disabilities. So we'll be having some content there from our public policy and research team, but we're also going to have some of the top folks in the fields around digital inclusion and accessibility taking place in the conference. There's two tracks.
Tony: There's the social contract for digital accessibility, which is going to focus a lot in. We have sessions dealing with the schools and employment ETS and employment services and training. How is that world with digital inclusion, working employment opportunities and cyberspace, but also too, how is this world of everything going online and being digital in our schools and our workplaces impacting us now? So that's the social contract sort of track we're having. And then the other track is specifically focused on ai. It'll be looking at the ethics around ai. What is the forecast trying to look at and how can it help us? What are some of the challenges? If it's things like Cindy Bennett with Google will be talking about the representation of accessibility and the disability space within the rise of ai. So Cynthia Bennett with Google, that'll be a fantastic presentation. I'll look forward to trying to duck into that one and listen when I get a break, but we'll even have things all the way down to a big conversation when AI first started to come out was the AI voices. That's one of the things that's so cool about AI. And in the audio description space, one of the premier sort of the grandfather of audio description, if you will, grandfather, just in the sense that he was one of the early adopters, Joel Snyder, Dr. Joel Snyder, who does audio description. He'll be having a panel on sort of the role that AI plays in that sort of space of creating inclusive media. And it'll be a fascinating conversation as well. You've had a chance to look through the agenda too. Anything really resonating out at you, Aaron?
Aaron:: A lot of the AI that's kind of been my personal interest and focus over the last few years at least, especially the last year, last six months. I would also say that there's going to be another screening of the Possibilities documentary, which I'm always take any chance I get personally to watch that because such a good film.
Tony: In fact, we just won some awards for it, which is exciting. We took best disability film at an international festival in Durban, South Africa called Power 24 Film Fest, and we've got some others on the horizon. We just won best film for a small disability festival called the Champions Film Salon in Texas. And yeah, it's been making some good traction and it focuses itself. There's a section in there about how AI and digital aids are sort of helping augment site loss and helping us out in the real world. So there's some neat things. We go to Tokyo and interview someone. So we actually, that screening is going to be free for folks. We'll be sending out, be sure to sign up for our email list, but we're going to be sending out A-R-S-V-P link for folks that are in and around Minneapolis. You can come out Monday, September 23rd in the evening and check the film out.
Tony: So at the hotel, we'll be at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Minneapolis. So come check it out. So in terms of other things with the conference, we've got the film, it's a great chance for people networking. We'll have our exhibit space. I've been talking with some of our exhibitors folks like Vasper, they've got a lot of exciting things in the horizon in terms of new emerging technologies. IRA is going to be there as well. One of the familiar spaces in this, they have similar to, we've talked about Myis be my ai, there's also sort of the IRA version of that and that people can use on the app, which is a neat thing. Just when we think of when the seeing AI app first came out, when Anna, Andrew Cole and other folks up at Microsoft gave that to the world for free. It's been great to see how that's been integrating itself so much with just sort of smart image recognition all around us in our, it's now in wearables and other devices.
Tony: So we'll have a number of the presenters, like I said, we'll have our own booth there, so you can stop by and chat with us. Yeah, so AFB leadership Conference, if you go to afb.org/af blc, that's afb.org/af blc. You can check out the full program agenda and all the things tied to that. We're even going to be having a summit. The Barbie made such a huge blast around the world, and one of our focuses is changing perception on blindness. In our current strategic plan we're going to be having on last day of the conference, a whole sort of seminar, mini summit work sessions on building consensus around shared narratives coming out of the pandemic. What is the world and how do we talk about blindness these days? So I think there's something for everybody from the corporate side, the programmer side, those that are into ai, those that are into even TBIs teachers working in schools, what is the future going to be like for us? So leading in the digital age, check it out afb.org/af blc. But yeah, and summer's coming to an end, man. It's been a busy summer, but top hits for the summer for you in terms of accessibility, any top things on your plate that really resonated this summer?
Aaron:: Oh man. We've already talked about ai and that's the biggest thing. One thing that's exciting that's coming out soon, I think APH is releasing their Monarch tablet, the multi-line Braille, braille tablet that also does tactile graphics. I think that comes out very soon, if I'm not mistaken. So that'll be very cool. I don't know about you, but I know when I was in school, I used Paper Braille the whole time. Had one of those math books that took up an entire bookshelf.
Tony: Those wax pages,
Aaron: Yes.
Tony: Plasticy heat thermo thing where they use heater, basically like a heat gun.
Aaron: So you have that. And then I personally, I've used a braille display and I can use it, but I just never got used to that motion. I was so used, grew up using paper braille, using a Perkins Brailer. I was just at the very tail end of the switch from in the nineties is when I was in elementary school. So switching from analog to digital, I still did mostly analog when it came to braille and that sort of thing. So I've been really excited to see these tablets come out. I know the canoe is one I've kept my eye on to, but for students, I think this Monarch is going to be really useful since you can have your whole bookshelf sized math textbook in one device as well as all your other textbooks. And I know that I would love to, A lot of times I think, man, I wish I had that when I was in school. And there's a lot of things like that, and this is one of 'em for sure.
Tony: I know our awardee for the Coring Kirchner Research Award this year is Tina, and she's a professor at University of South Carolina, upstate, which is in Greenville, I believe, Spartanburg area. So around Spartanburg in the Piedmont of South Carolina. And her whole focus, her research has been in Nemeth Code and braille and really trying to promote braille for stem. And I think of that sometimes because when I was taking math and stuff in school, it was such a challenge learning Nemeth code as well for braille. It's exciting that these sciences and with the Monarch, yeah, the formulas and the graphical elements, and you can have the universe appear at a double tap on the screen for the Monarch. I was checking it out at the ACB and NFB conventions and at their booth, and it's the maps and geomapping and things like that. It's just really cool to think in terms of STEM for education for kids, the opportunities that can now be available for the work that Tina's been doing to do better at teaching NM myth code and getting kids to be better users in the math and STEM sciences and the technology's there just to help 'em along the way as well, so that it really is a more inclusive track that can be accessible and really opened a lot of doors for our community,
Aaron: Even in careers, I think too, because there's always been people who are really pushing the, being pioneers and pushing things forward and fighting to figure out how to make things work, especially in the sciences and math and things like that. But it's going to streamline things so much more, I think. And it really seems like it could open up and make it more, not smooth, sailing is not the word I'm looking for, but basically make it less arduous to if you're blind or low vision and you want to get into, if you want to be a theoretical physicist or something like that, these kinds of graphical tablets where you have a lot more or spatial access to spatial knowledge should really break down a lot of barriers and a lot of obstacles you have to overcome to enter those fields. For sure.
Tony: Yeah, it's great. When I think back to my own high school, and I'm much older than you in the eighties and early nineties, they intentionally would steer me away from stem, right? It was like, what if you took sculpting? Or what if you did theater, which I love theater and music and all that sort of the stereotype. Oh, give them a piano and a guitar. But yeah, it's fun with my two kids watching 'em go through sciences.
Aaron: I don't know if I was directly discouraged, but my degree is in history and I love history. there was definitely a part of me that thought, I can compete on uneven playing field in this degree. It was definitely part of the decision making, not the dominant part necessarily, but definitely it was definitely a consideration when I was deciding what I wanted to do in college.
Tony: Yeah, for sure. Man. So exciting times. Again, the motto for Minneapolis is forward and it makes us think the future, and it's cool. I'm thinking of kids playing with Barbie dolls. I'm thinking of kids cranking through the periodic table of elements and doing geography mapping things. And just the access now is we're steps forward. And with AI becoming leap years forward. So it's exciting times. So yeah, for sure. Well, that's about all the time. We're going to have this month for the Access World podcast, but tune in October when we'll have be able to talk about how we survived the A FB Leadership Conference. Leadership conference. It's my main baby. So I'm definitely going to be sounding haggard when we record our next podcast, but I think we're going to try to get some podcast interviews at the leadership conference, so tune in. Yeah, for sure.
Tony: I'll probably be part of our podcast next time around, but happy end of summer, Aaron. You too. Yeah, so everybody, thanks for listening. You can check us out at afb.org/aw for the quarterly issue that dropped in August of Access World Magazine, all things digital inclusion and accessibility. And be sure to check out afp.org and even consider making a gift if you want to support us with the podcast or just all the work we're doing to make the world more inclusive and expanding possibilities for people who are blind or have low vision. So meantime, hope everybody has a good end of their summer. Be safe, be well, and we will talk to you again next month.
MUSIC FADES IN
Voiceover: A. F. B.
MUSIC FADES OUT
Share
