Episode Notes
Welcome to the first episode of AccessWorld — a new AFB Podcast on Digital Inclusion and Accessibility. A production of the American Foundation for the Blind, AccessWorld is a quarterly publication of AFB, focusing on digital accessibility and access technology for people with disabilities.In our first episode, we’re excited to cross-over with AFB’s Inform and Connect podcast, which provides news and views from the blindness and low vision perspective. In this first episode, AFB’s Inform & Connect hosts Melody Goodspeed and Tony Stephens welcome AccessWorld’s Editor-in-Chief Aaron Preece. Together, they break down what’s new with AccessWorld, share what’s in the most recent issue, and what’s on the horizon for this new podcast, which will drop on the first of each month. Aaron also provides a breakdown on an article he wrote for the most recent issue on accessible gaming for people who are blind or have low vision. You can check out this article and the other stories as well as the complete AccessWorld back issues free of charge! Be sure to subscribe for future episodes as they drop, and you can access a transcript of this episode below.
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AccessWorld Podcast, Episode 1 Transcript
MUSIC FADES IN Tony Stephens: Hi, everyone. This is Tony Stephens, Director of Communications with the American Foundation for the Blind, and we're excited to bring to you a new podcast, AccessWorld. It's going to drop each month, so be sure to subscribe. It goes along with our quarterly publication. And this first episode is a crossover with our Inform & Connect podcast. So, here we go. Enjoy.
MUSIC FADES OUT
Melody Goodspee...: Hey, everybody, welcome to the Inform & Connect podcast. I'm hanging out with my good colleague and fantastic partner in crime, Tony Stephens.
Tony Stephens: Hello.
Melody Goodspee...: Hey, buddy. We are talking today about accessing the world. Are you excited about this topic, Tony?
Tony Stephens: I'm very exciting, because there's been a lot of access on conversations here at AFB. In fact, that's one of today's topics that we'll be looking at.
Melody Goodspee...: I know.
Tony Stephens: But it's a world that needs to be more accessible, and we're working to make that happen.
Melody Goodspee...: It does, and one of the things I want to point out here is, we talk a lot about AFB about employment access, but when we're talking about digital inclusion, we're really talking about how it touches every part of our lives, right, like our personal, professional, all the things, right?
Tony Stephens: It is hands down the thing that... I heard another podcast where they were interviewing a blind author, and they had the conversation of, all technology is assistive, right?
Melody Goodspee...: Right.
Tony Stephens: And we live in a world where if we lose our phones tomorrow, it wouldn't just be people who are blind or low vision that are impacted, the entire world would just freak out.
Melody Goodspee...: Oh, yeah, in a massively bad way. I mean, just not a small freak out, it would be like, I don't know, Armageddon freak out. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can't think of another person to better have here with us than our Editor in Chief of AccessWorld, our very own Aaron Preece. Hey, Aaron, how are you?
Aaron Preece: I'm great. Thanks for having me.
Melody Goodspee...: Tony and I are really excited to have you, Aaron, and I just can't wait to hear your story and move us along here, because you've been here at the American Foundation for the Blind for a while now, just a minute. Can you tell the audience how long you've been with AFB?
Aaron Preece: I have been with AFB off and on since I was not even a sophomore in high school. When I was 15 years old, I was a high school intern back in 2006. I've joined full-time in 2013, and then I was a college intern before that, so I've been around for a really long time at AFB off and on.
Melody Goodspee...: Yes you have. That is awesome. So you got to get work experience here, and that's a big thing we might even touch on in this segment, so that's great. Can you talk us through...? So you're our editor in chief of our amazing publication, AccessWorld, and you've been doing a lot of new stuff. Can you tell us a little bit about the history of AccessWorld?
Aaron Preece: Sure. So, AccessWorld, I think it was back in maybe sometime in the '80s or very early '90s, I think it actually might've been 1985, AccessWorld started out as a, I think it was braille and cassette publication called TACTIC, ran by our longtime writer, Deborah Kendrick, who writes for AccessWorld. So, she ran this TACTIC Magazine. You subscribed to it, and you would get the cassette mailed to you or get the... pretty sure there was braille. In about '99 or 2000, I think AccessWorld actually launched in 2000, but we purchased that from her and turned it into an online magazine. The internet had been around for a while, five or 10 years probably at that point, but that was when AFB really put the push on online content, really fairly early on compared to what you'd see later. So AccessWorld has been online for 23 years now. It started out bimonthly. About 2011, went to a monthly publication. It's a quarterly publication now with our recent change. Traditionally, AccessWorld essentially published anything and everything related to blindness and low vision and technology. It could be, really, any topic. Especially early on, we did a lot of reviews of assistive technology. If anybody's an AccessWorld reader, you might remember in the mid 2000s, there was a lot of research and work done on diabetes technology, so insulin pumps and blood glucose meters and that sort of thing, and started probably in the 2010s once the... The iPhone really changed the landscape, so in the last probably 10 to 13 years or so, we've had the opportunity to report on a lot more mainstream technology, just because it's so much more accessible than it used to be. I remember back in the day, we'd get a cell phone, or we'd get a Kindle, and we'd do an article on it, but the article was basically, "Well, this isn't accessible," or, "This one section of this product is accessible." Now, pretty much anything we review, for the most part, there's still things that are not accessible or have serious issues, but when we pick things, oftentimes, they are very accessible. Just, if you look back through the AccessWorld archives, it's a great look at the changing landscape of accessibility, just based on the things we've covered and the things we say about the technology that we're reviewing and the kinds of technology we're reviewing.
Tony Stephens: So you were talking about how AccessWorld has really been there for a lot of the consumer things. And it's fantastic that, yeah, when you think about how much the world has become accessible now and all the devices that we have access to ourselves as people who are blind, stuff that's even free, back in the days when we used to expend exorbitant amounts, I mean, there's still a lot of high-tech assistive tech out there, but as AccessWorld's recently been undergoing some sort of positive direction changes and a new direction. And it's really focusing, as well, sort of pulling the lens back and trying to reach out just beyond that particular core audience. But how can we preach access to the masses on a much larger scale? Which is exciting, that's one of the things about... This is also the first episode of the AccessWorld podcast, which is great, and we'll be doing this podcast each month. But talk to us a little bit about this is part of this larger change and how the focus has been pulled back, in a sense, to broaden the impact that AccessWorld can make.
Aaron Preece: Sure. So, I would say at AFB in general, in the last several years in particular, we've really looked to try to make the greatest impact we can, we say systems change, looking to impact industries as a whole to make positive changes that way. We have our new Talent Lab program, where we train interns and apprentices, they're both sighted and blind, teaching them about accessibility, and they go through a full year-long or more course learning about accessibility and how to be project managers and add accessibility to their coding if they're computer science students. So, as part of that and using that as a springboard, we were able to... With AccessWorld, we wanted to promote digital inclusion as a whole and reach out to the greater technology industry, and also employment, just to try to bring knowledge to the industry on accessibility and on hiring practices and that sort of thing. So, what we've discovered, I'll use our new product evaluations as an example of how things have changed. So, historically, we've always aimed our product reviews at consumers and direct service providers, such as TVIs or rehabilitation professionals. So, what we've done now, if you look at our current reviews, they're going to still provide you with the information on, "Well, is this accessible or not? Is this something you would want to use or not?" You'll have the data there to make that decision for yourself. But-
Tony Stephens: And of course, [inaudible 00:08:07] the rating, on an accessibility scale almost, will this work for you?
Aaron Preece: Yes. So you'll have all the details of what works, what doesn't, how big are the issues that are actually experienced, that sort of thing. But what we're trying to do as well in those articles, in addition, we've changed up the formula, so to speak. So now, instead of just giving you the details of is this accessible or not, we are also focusing on, well, if you're a developer, is there something in this app or a way they're implementing accessibility that you can mimic yourself? Or what are the issues that you should avoid as a developer yourself? What pitfalls can you avoid by looking at what needs to be fixed in this particular app or service? So, we're looking to essentially expand the audience from the consumer and direct service providers to include the developers, decision-makers, HR managers, and people hiring, people involved in hiring, people looking to enter the accessibility industry, or industry professionals themselves, accessibility professionals, looking to expand that audience and try to make a greater impact. Because we have a lot of expertise in these areas, and we have a lot of connections and that sort of thing. We want to share this knowledge as much as we can. And so, that's been the impetus behind the change and the-
Tony Stephens: It's like the [inaudible 00:09:37]-
Aaron Preece: ... refocus, I would say, in AccessWorld in the last year.
Melody Goodspee...: One of the things, Aaron, I love this, as you, Tony, we all three of us can agree is that we get a ton of questions about that, "Hey. We want to be more accessible. We want to hire people that are blind. We just don't know how to do it," and really giving them the tools and expanding this to say, "Hey, just take the first step. One, thank you for reaching out and saying you wanting to. But two, for us to give those what you're talking about, that extra thing, is fantastic." What do you think, Tony?
Tony Stephens: No, I think it's great, and when you look at this summer issue that just dropped at the end of August, when you listen to it on the podcast, as we'll be featuring some of the writers in the AccessWorld podcast that break down the stories even more and give you a little bit more grounding in them, but just go into the afb.org/aw for AccessWorld, that's afb.org/aw, and check out the summer issue of AccessWorld, and it's really interesting. I mean, we can dive into some of the articles that are in that, I think, Aaron. But it gives a good sense of, here's things that we obviously need to know that are important things for the people that nerd out on this stuff. But at the same time, if you're new to it... And everybody hears about accessibility. There's a really popular book that's gaining traction now that talks an awful lot about accessibility in it, and blindness. You hear more about audio description and things like that. It's becoming more of a mainstream understanding, the same way that certain things after the ADA became very apparent very quickly, like curb cuts and things like that. I mean, the digital inclusion space is kind of the modern push around just disability rights and equality and inclusion. So yeah, I mean, can we dive into some of the articles? Because you got some fascinating stuff in this quarter.
Melody Goodspee...: Yes, you do. I'm pretty excited about it.
Aaron Preece: Yeah, I can go through it. So, this issue kind of has a dual focus. So, it is the summer issue, so we have a couple articles focusing on... This will be out of the order of the table contents. So, we have a couple articles focusing on summer-related topics. So we covered... During the Worldwide Developers Conference that Apple hosted this year back in June, I believe, there were several accessibility sessions, really good quality accessibility sessions on adding various types of accessibility to different Apple products and apps and that sort of thing. So we showcased those in an article. And then, in addition, historically, AccessWorld has done a back-to-school issue in July. And so, we are quarterly now, so the summer issue's in August. So what we did is, kind of as a nod to that and to cover that topic, we did a review of Google Classroom this year. That's what we use here at AFB with our Talent Lab participants. Actually, the participants are kind of advanced interns and apprentice, did the pair testing and essentially did the report. So, the Google Classroom article is interesting, because it gives you all the details, like I said before, about how the product reviews work. But it gives you a little bit of an inside glimpse into the kinds of things we look for as testers and how we evaluate using WCAG references and that sort of thing. So people will get a glimpse of that and how that works internally somewhat, just based on the flow and the structure of the article. And again, that's such an important issue right now, as always. Especially online learning is so common now, just across the board in K-12, obviously, in college. So, so many more people, I can't imagine based on compared to when I was in school, and I remember using Blackboard in college, but I can't imagine now the amount of time students are probably spending on online learning platforms. And, at least from what I remember and what I've seen, it's been hit-or-miss accessibilitywise, so I thought this was a really important topic to cover. And we're really thankful to have access to Google Classroom and to be able to base this... Well I think too, it's nice that we were able to base this article not just on testing it for a month or whatever. The people that wrote the article have been using Google Classroom, both people that are, I think, low vision and [inaudible 00:14:06], a low vision/blind person, and they have been able to base their article somewhat on... They've had the experience with using Google Classroom for their assignments in a real-world situation over the last entire year. So it's not just a, "Let's take a look at it for a couple of weeks," which is... In a lot of cases, that's what you're going to end up with when you try to review these kinds of products. So, I was really thankful that I was able to get them to write that article, just because they were able to share their real experience.
Tony Stephens: And it's not [inaudible 00:14:33]-
Melody Goodspee...: Can the three of...? Oh, sorry. Can the three of us pause on this for a second and talk about what this means to us as blind individuals? I mean, for me, education's so important. I'm a parent of an eighth grader and a first-grader, and I don't get to experience... Going back to school is quite stressful when I'm, me as a parent, trying to look at what my kids are learning about, what they're accessing. They're using Google Classroom. They're using all of these things. But there are other elements that the school systems use that not necessarily are accessible with how frustrating it is from a parent point of view. I'd like to hear your experience, Tony, as a parent as well, and then also, yours, Aaron, as a student, just since you highlighted that in the beginning.
Tony Stephens: Well, I think in some sense, this is what's great about the new direction that AccessWorld is taking in that the entire world is now tethered even more because of the pandemic, right?
Melody Goodspee...: Right.
Tony Stephens: And you mentioned a minute ago, Aaron, about how it was more of out-of-school type functions, right, or distance learning and things like that. But it is fully integrated into... I got a sixth grader and an eighth grader that started this week in school, back in Baltimore City, and the Baltimore City schools have really integrated not just Google Classroom, but I mean, it's great that you talk about too what access looks like in these spaces, because there's other apps like Clever and all these other tools that people use for their education that the cities sort of mandate and that you got to use. And as a parent, even, it's good to be able to get on there and make sure, "Did my son actually upload his homework like he said?" And the thing-
Melody Goodspee...: Yes. Did he get the grade they actually said they got? Yes.
Tony Stephens: Kids have a lot of pressure on them to perform. I mean, you have first, second, third-graders that basically are needing to become somewhat of an IT, not a wizard, per se, but yeah. And then, when you're a blind parent, or even a blind child in school, or a blind college student or a college student who's low vision, so much of this stuff ties into just, it's fully integrated now into the learning experience. There's no more papers that come home. There's never anything that comes home anymore from kids. It's crazy. It's all pushed through these channels for these portals for education and learning.
Melody Goodspee...: Even tracking their buses, which, by the way, is not fairly accessible, but yes. What about you, Aaron? What are your thoughts on this?
Aaron Preece: So, for me, I come from a different place, because I graduated about 10 years ago from my university. So, when I was in school, especially in K-12, there was nothing online. I mean, you'd go to the computer lab for a very specific assignment, but I was the only one using a laptop in class, emailing things. I was very, honestly, fortunate that I was able to email papers to my teachers instead of having to try to print them out and hope that they looked right or trying to find someone to double-check and make sure that they looked right when they printed, that sort of thing. And then, in college, some stuff was on Blackboard, but again, most of it was still paper. Even then, again, I'm in the dorms printing something out and hoping that I can catch a desk attendant to take a look at it to let me know. So, it was interesting to me, one thing I vividly remember, that the Kindle app for iOS became accessible in like May or June or something of 2013, like early quarter 2013, and I was thinking, "Man, if this had been made accessible like a..." It's such a great... I'll say I love the Kindle. I use it all the time. It was a big deal when they made it fully accessible, because it was a big undertaking for them, and they really did a fantastic job. But man, I remember thinking, "Oh, this would've made my life so much easier if this was accessible when I was in college," just being able to-
Melody Goodspee...: Right? Not having to scan all your books.
Aaron Preece: Yes. [inaudible 00:18:28] being able to just read them on my phone like I would any other book, and, Oh man. And so, I see this from kind of outside through articles. I have friends that are teachers. I have friends that are teaching entirely online to K-5. And like you said, Tony, the kids that are first grade on, or kindergarten on, are now expected to have the knowledge to do their assignments online, submit their assignments, log into Zoom, use Zoom or whatever platform they're using. It's amazing to me the changed landscape. And then also, just based on, what platform are you on? If you are using Windows at home and then you've got an iPad at school or you're given a Chromebook or something, for a blind person, I would say... I'm curious what your all's thoughts are, but when you switch, say, screen readers, learning VoiceOver on the Mac versus JAWS or NVDA or something on Windows-
Tony Stephens: Chromebox [inaudible 00:19:31], yeah.
Aaron Preece: Yeah, Chromebox. They're all very... For someone's side of the interface, it's a little different. But mouse navigation, that sort of thing, is fairly similar, but it's such a bigger jump, just based on what platform you're using if you're blind or low vision, oftentimes. So it's-
Tony Stephens: Like different kinds of cars, it's like different types of transportation, where a train, a plane, and a car will get you from Washington to New York, but they go about different ways. You got to do different processes. You got to go wait in a line here, or you got to travel here, or you got to take you longer to do this, and it's... Yeah, that's a-
Melody Goodspee...: That was such a great analogy, my friend. Good one, I like it a lot.
Tony Stephens: Oh, that's trademarked, not to be used without express written consent.
Melody Goodspee...: But it's true. And we're like life hackers when it comes to this stuff.
Tony Stephens: Yeah, it's totally like that.
Melody Goodspee...: I mean, it's... Yeah.
Tony Stephens: Speaking of school starting, and one of the saddest parts of school starting, well, other than seeing my kids get older one year at a time, was they can't play their video games anymore. And one of the things I love in this quarter, Aaron, is one from you on accessible gaming, which has really been taking off. One of the big things that... what's the big consumer technology conference each year in Vegas, this year, that won some of the AccessWorld's was the Sony PlayStation, building in accessibility into it. There's been a lot of space in the accessibility gaming space, and there's a really cool article I enjoy in this issue, folks should check it out, afb.org/aw, on accessible gaming. Talk a little bit about that, and it's kind of a personal thing that you're into as well as someone who's blind.
Aaron Preece: Yeah. I'm so thrilled to be able to do a category now on gaming. We've done gaming content in AccessWorld before. The game I feature in this, I actually reviewed back in the day. So, gaming, I would say I'm a gamer, probably. I don't know what that label entails, but I play a lot of video games and always have. It's been important recently, because, for the longest time, games were either accessible by accident. People would play, say, a fighting game, because you're just on a 2D plane. You can't really go that many places. If there's stereo audio, you can tell who's on the left, who's on the right, that kind of thing. So, games were maybe accessible by accident, or it was like a hobbyist made the game. They want to play a first-person shooter. They know other blind people want to play a first person shooter, so they make their own, and it's like one or two people that are blind themselves making these things. And they did a really good job. So that was... oftentimes, until, I would say, since maybe 2015, 2016, even. It's a very recent thing that accessibility has been added to especially AAA games. The Last of Us II was a major landmark in accessibility when it added a full set of accessibility suite options for all kinds of disabilities. But it was really, I think, the first to add full blindness accessibility in particular. And so, we wanted to, in AccessWorld, start a... And then, other people have followed suit since then. The original Last of Us is now accessible. There's a couple others. I know Diablo IV, that just came out recently, everybody's playing, is mostly accessible. I think they're looking to improve the accessibility even more with that one. There was the Hearthstone game from Blizzard. Someone made a mod for that that Blizzard kind of accepted or acknowledged, and it allowed blind and low vision people to play Hearthstone the card game on a level playing field with their sighted peers and achieve the same impressive ranks on the leaderboard and everything else that their sighted peers can. So, to start out our category I did an article in this issue covering the history of game accessibility and why it's important now, covered... Really, it's an intro article. It's meant to get you started. If you are a developer or if you're interested in game accessibility at all, I really aimed to give a high-level view of accessibility in gaming. And it's a complicated topic, because you have something for websites or apps. You've got things like WCAG to give you... All the guidelines are there. You follow these guidelines, and your app or website or what have you is going to be pretty accessible if you follow the guidelines. They're pretty straightforward when you're dealing with-
Tony Stephens: And [inaudible 00:24:24] guidelines or Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, [inaudible 00:24:26].
Aaron Preece: Yes. Yes. Sorry.
Tony Stephens: Yeah. No, no, it's good.
Aaron Preece: So yeah. That's something I mentioned in the article too, is, most of the time, when we talk about accessibility, we're talking about static content or a web app, so think, like we said, Google Classroom, Google Docs, Zoom, the online Office or the offline... still complicated but still fairly static programs. Even if you go into something like video editing or audio editing or anything like that, you're still working with a fairly static program when it comes to accessibility. Gaming can be anything.
Tony Stephens: [inaudible 00:25:03].
Aaron Preece: Hearthstone was made to be accessible because it's a card game, and you just need to figure out, "How do I place cards? How do I get the information?" I don't know how many people are familiar with something like Breath of the Wild, the Zelda game that's super popular. That game has tons of vertical movement, so you might be on a mountain, and you see something interesting on a mountain miles away, or in-game miles away, and then you jump off the mountain and use your glider to go over to this mountain miles and miles... a significant distance from you that's something you just saw blurry in the distance that you want to check out. How do you make that accessible? How do you make that level of vertical movement and vertical axis accessible and that level of motion and that sort of thing? Completely different games, the kind of accessibility you have to add. Hearthstone has got a great mod, and they did a fantastic job with the design. The UI design is fantastic. But the idea behind it is fairly... With something like Hearthstone or something that's more static, or even, say, like the old video games, like a old Mario game or something, making those accessible is going to be a lot more straightforward than something like modern games with a lot of 3D movement, a lot of very precise tracking, that sort of thing. So, in general, it's a complicated topic, so we covered various adding accessibility for various disability. So, say, for someone with hearing loss, there's a fascinating game called Alien: Isolation. In a lot of that game, your focus is on the audio. You have to listen for the alien in the ducts above you. You have to watch how much noise you're making or pay attention to how much noise you're making. If people attack you, are they going to draw the alien to you? That sort of thing. So for, say, someone with hearing loss, you would want to potentially add some way of adding visual cues for those kinds of audio instances, when it's important like that. We did some information for people with cognitive disabilities, motor, that sort of thing. And then I also focused on blindness accessibility in particular, because that's another fairly complex topic. And like I said, with the Breath of the Wild and Hearthstone example, it's a... So many different ways you can add accessibility. So I use the audio... There's an audio-based role-playing game called Manamon by a company called VGStorm. And so, in this article, I do an audio demonstration of the navigation options in their title. And then, there's another role-playing game called Heroes Call, which has, really, a completely opposite navigation style, two completely opposite ways of showing and depicting the visual environment in audio and allowing you to navigate effortlessly, really, but completely different way. So, this really is meant to serve as an intro, and it's just, there's tons of untapped possibilities in gaming accessibility, because there's so many ways you can take it. There's so many different types of games that could be made accessible. And the fact that people are taking it seriously now is amazing to me that AAA studios are taking it seriously and really taking the extra time and effort to make their games accessible.
Tony Stephens: It's such an [inaudible 00:28:32]. My kids are so into their role-playing games, and it's something that they can share with their... I mean, if there's inclusion in that space... Because I have to kick them outside. They just don't go hang outside anymore. It's all online with their friends playing RPG games. But it's the immersion, that when you think about it, this goes beyond games. I noticed this past several months, my iPhone, when I would do directions, it would start playing tones to let me know the direction I'm walking in. It was like, it started doing... And I know, what was it, the Microsoft Soundscape was doing that. That technology of immersion, that's kind of the frontier, still, of accessibility in this digital age, and it's exciting that the technology with AI and with the new technology coming out of South Korea with semiconductor possibly that can make huge supercomputers that are very small, but just enormous potential that we can get this immersion that the game is just like the first chapter in this whole new world of accessibility for us in the digital space.
Melody Goodspee...: Yeah. And I want to add to this, going back to what you said, Aaron, about these kids that are blind or low vision having equal footing with their sighted peers. I mean, let's just talk about the peer pressure of being a kid, right? I mean, not all that, but like AI. But these kids are getting ready... They're actually interacting with their sighted peers and-
Tony Stephens: Have a sleepover, and they can have something to play alongside you.
Melody Goodspee...: Yes. And they don't have to sit in the corner. I mean, look, we've all been there, right? I mean, even today, conversations will be... loud restaurant. I'm like, "I'm just going to sit here and absorb this, because I can't hear a thing." But it does. It gives that element of inclusion. And kids can better understand that differences are not a bad thing. They're actually quite good and really broaden their environment. I really wanted to thank you for bringing that up too.
Tony Stephens: It's clear that you're passionate about it, Aaron. I mean, can you share a little bit about your own blindness? Were you blind as a child or low vision as a child? And then, what the experience was like, because you, I guess, grew up in the '90s, when, really, a lot of the online game and that world started creating. But talk a little bit about your own vision loss. That's an interesting...
Aaron Preece: Sure. So-
Tony Stephens: Stuff that's personal as well as professional for you.
Aaron Preece: Yeah. So, I have a condition called Leber's congenital amaurosis. So, it's kind of related to RP, not as common. From what I can tell, I started out with worse vision than most people with RP that I know, but my vision has decreased more gradually. So when I was a kid, I had pretty... I mean, it was still really bad. But it was fairly high-functioning low vision. And when you're talking about interacting with your peers and that, I was fortunate that I could still... like with a game. Me and my friends were all huge gamers, especially in school. So I was able to play games. I could see just well enough to play a lot of the... Especially back then, I was fortunate that the games weren't nearly as complex and realistic as they are now, much more bright colors and much more simple shapes and that kind of thing, so it was a lot easier to play. Yeah, so I started out pretty low vision. Interestingly, at least for me, I find that not a lot of people seem to have done this. I'm curious if you've... I don't know what your all's visions is like. As much as I had low vision, I did not like using my vision. I've always kind of functioned as if I were blind. I found doing things as if I were blind to be an easier and more efficient way for me to do things, so I would only really use my vision when I had to, so, basically, playing video games and doing math on my CCTV. Used braille growing up. It's hard to even tell when my vision started decreasing. I've lost all my color vision at this point. I used to have some. I'm not sure when that happened, probably in high school. Kind of funny. I remember in high school, there was a room I was in all the time with my TVI, and there was a chair in there, and I thought for probably the first three years I was in school that that chair was orange, and it was gray. So, apparently, I lost my color vision at some... Like I said, it's gradual enough that I don't even notice until I try to do something I used to be able to do. Video games are actually a good example, because I would try to play something, and I go, "Oh, can't see this anymore. That's new." So, by the time I was in college, still have low vision. I can see, say, the difference between a sidewalk and the grass, I've got a black Lab guide dog. I can see her against my light-colored carpet, that sort of thing. But I function pretty much as if I were blind, just because my vision's not all that useful anymore.
Tony Stephens: Yeah. Myself, so I was born with a genetic retinal disease. It's really rare. And so, if I sat in the front room in the classroom when I was going through grade school and stuff, I could kind of read the board, had a TVI and that kind of stuff. But then I went total when I was 15, and then for eight years was like that, but then, they were able to get a slither of a pinhole in one eye back eight years later. But, I mean, it's not really usable... It's something, right, so I can't say it's just a void. It's not that there's no light perception, like, what is it, 10, 15% of the population. We say blindness, and majority of people think it's this or that, but it's not, right?
Melody Goodspee...: Mm-hmm. Right.
Tony Stephens: But I hear you, because it's like, yeah, I tune out, and it's just, it's still that eight years of just being with no real usable vision period. The audible stuff, which is why I loved... One of the things that will drop in this podcast feed for the new AccessWorld podcast is you did an audio recording demoing the Manamon game, right? Manamon, am I saying that right?
Aaron Preece: Manamon, I think.
Tony Stephens: Manamon, Manamon game. And it's so cool, because it is just like, it's the sounds where you create... It's like reading a good book, and you get the vision of what that person looks like in your head, and that's the world, right? It does kind of this cool job of, I'm imagining this room that you're walking around in. It could be a very visual game to begin with, but I still have in my head this idea of what it is, just because of the interactions that you demonstrate and using sound and sonic tone, and it was cool. That was really cool. So we'll put that in the podcast feed. But yeah, it was [inaudible 00:35:29] in that sense of just like, yeah, I live as a person pretty much who's blind. I don't...
Melody Goodspee...: I am a person that's totally blind. I'm listening to the two of you talk about this, and I did not have a, I'm going to say, teacher of visual impairment, just in case some of our listeners don't know what a TVI is. But I... totally sighted, blindness, not in my wheelhouse, and lost my eyesight very, very suddenly, lights out basically almost overnight, due to optic nerve damage. But, for me, hearing you guys talk about that, like listening to a good book or whatever you're saying, it paints such a picture in my head. When I see these things in my head, they're very real to me, and they're very... I can see them. I think we tend to think we see with our eyes, but we don't. We see with our visual cortex. And so using our other senses to put that information in, it's, yeah, just to throw that 2 cents in there. But I like this, because now I can play a game or two with my son, who's definitely a gamer. You said, like trying to kick him out to go to the pool, and I wanted to live there during the summer.
Tony Stephens: Well, and it's just that more immersion. It's only going to get better, I imagine, Aaron, right, to at least be positive. I mean, the glass is half full, that when we look-
Aaron Preece: Oh, for sure.
Tony Stephens: ... at where we're going with AI and technology and stuff, I mean, this digital inclusion world will be more inclusive, because they're tackling that immersion, the big thing that hasn't been tackled yet, to make it feel like we're really part of it. Yeah, that's cool. Well, and that's exciting that AccessWorld is taking on this direction not just to sort of bridge the divide and expand to a larger audience, but in some sense, evangelize. I mean, the Talent Lab folks are learning accessibility, but they're also, in a sense, going out there and evangelizing, thanks to [inaudible 00:37:25] AccessWorld and really taking it to the streets, as you would say.
Aaron Preece: Yeah. I would say in general too, the rest of this issue is kind a way of getting people who are new to accessibility, whether they be a developer or... And the gaming articles are part of that, kind of getting sort of an intro. This issue kind of became an introduction issue. We have two other articles, two interviews, one with Cala Campfield from Salesforce covering, "What's it like getting into the accessibility industry? What do you need to know? What kind of credentials do you need to have? What benefits you if you're looking to get into this industry and do accessibility work?" And then we did our interview with Steve, I'm going to get his name wrong, because I've only ever heard my screen reader say it, it says Sawczyn, but I'm not sure if that's the pronunciation, worked with Target, works at HealthPartners now.
Tony Stephens: Hey Steve, if you're listening.
Melody Goodspee...: We're trying.
Aaron Preece: We're trying, Steve, if you're...
Tony Stephens: Playing voiceover for JAWS.
Aaron Preece: Yeah. So, he's got a great résumé, very involved in the various accessibility projects in the industry for a while. So his article goes over the basics of being an accessibility evangelist, if you want to go that route, or if you are a developer yourself, where you can get started and learning about accessibility. So that trio of articles gives people an introduction to the industry and gets you started for people that are interested in it.
Tony Stephens: That's exciting. I mean, there very well is a demand on the horizon if we keep moving in this direction and we keep being successful with all the work that you and all the writers, your whole team of folks at AccessWorld are doing, and I'm excited by the podcast.
Melody Goodspee...: Me too.
Aaron Preece: For sure.
Tony Stephens: Love to talk to you and nerd out on this stuff a lot more, but it's going to be exciting to have this podcast launch. And yeah. So thanks for everything you guys are doing over at... the whole team, guys in the Midwestern non-gender-specific sense. But yeah, everybody over at AccessWorld.
Melody Goodspee...: Yes. It's really exciting, and I can't thank you enough. It's so fun when you get to spend your Monday morning hanging out with your coworkers, I just want to say.
Tony Stephens: Yes. It's just like a really long coffee, water cooler-
Aaron Preece: Coffee.
Melody Goodspee...: Yeah, yes. Yes, it is. Talking about all this [inaudible 00:39:56]-
Tony Stephens: I'll just have to start yelling, "Get to work," soon.
Melody Goodspee...: Yeah. Yes, we get to advocate and hang. I love it. Well, Aaron, thank you so much for being here with us. I'm super excited for AccessWorld. If you guys want to learn more about AccessWorld, as Tony is probably going to [inaudible 00:40:11] do it again, it's afb.org/aw, where you can learn all of these great things. And, if you're not subscribing, go ahead and click and subscribe too, because we have that option there for AccessWorld.
Aaron Preece: And something I'd add too is that the entire backlog of AccessWorld going back to the very first issue is available on our website for free. So you can go back, like I talked about earlier, the history of accessibility seen through AccessWorld. But if you ever are interested in any of AccessWorld, it's all there online for you, all freely accessible, easy to access.
Melody Goodspee...: And we all love the word free, because it's fun. Well, thank you guys so much. Aaron, if people-
Aaron Preece: Thank you for having us.
Melody Goodspee...: Yes. If people want to reach you, Aaron, how could they do that? I know you're on the website. Is there any other thing you want to add to before we let these lovely people go and start looking at AccessWorld?
Aaron Preece: Yeah, probably the best way to reach me would be through my email. It's apreece@afb.org, and Preece is P-R-E-E-C-E. So apreece@afb.org is the best way to get ahold of me personally.
Melody Goodspee...: Great. Aaron, thank you so much. Tony, do you have anything left before we wrap this up?
Tony Stephens: No, this is exciting. And we have doubled our podcasts in the sense of it's going to be nice to have another podcast as part of... I'm here in my little recording studio I have in my home office, and I'm going to start calling this the AFB studio.
Melody Goodspee...: I'm going to start building mine out with more equipment.
Tony Stephens: Same.
Melody Goodspee...: Yes.
Tony Stephens: [inaudible 00:41:42] to nerd out on and-
Melody Goodspee...: We're all going to nerd out on this. All right, well, thank you guys so much for hanging with us today. Again, Aaron, thank you, Tony. And if you want to learn more about AFB and our initiatives, you can visit afb.org. And don't forget, guys, go sign up for AccessWorld. Sharing is caring. Take care, have a great day. Bye.
MUSIC FADES IN
Tony Stephens: You've been listening to AccessWorld, a podcast of the American Foundation for the Blind. Thanks for listening, and feel free to subscribe, like, and share wherever you listen to your podcasts. Suggestions, thoughts, comments can be sent to communications at afb.org, and you can access the publication AccessWorld by going to afb.org/aw. To learn more about our programs, research, and advocacy at the American Foundation for the Blind, visit our website at www.afb.org, and even consider making a tax-deductible gift today. It helps our work. AFB, creating a world of no limits for people who are blind or have low vision. MUSIC FADES OUT
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