Category: Uncategorized

The NFL released the 2023 schedule earlier this week. I wanted a version I could use in Excel and am sharing it here. It is a slightly modified version of a file I obtained online from Draft Kings. I made two changes to the file so it would read column headers and row headers automatically with most screen readers. I converted the grid to an actual Excel table. This adds actual column headers and should…

I’m definitely late to the party on this one but recently learned about an app called VOCR. As the name implies, it adds OCR (optical character recognition) ability to VoiceOver on the Mac. The concept behind what the app does is straight forward. Run OCR on a full window or whatever is in the VoiceOver cursor, present the to the user with commands to move around and allow mouse clicks to be issued on the…

A mistaken press of CTRL+q when browsing recently alerted me to a very helpful change in Microsoft Edge. This brings up a feature billed as Command Palette, which allows you to enter a wide range of browser commands into an edit box.   According to details on the web page for the feature, this is an experimental feature you may need to enable. I didn’t specifically enable this feature but don’t know if I had…

A while ago I wrote about a somewhat complicated way to use Windows Quick Assist to connect to another computer for offering technical assistance that worked around the lack of audio redirection in the Quick Assist environment. That is, audio playing on the remote computer wasn’t heard on the local computer. I just discovered that audio redirection now appears to be supported with Quick Assist. I’m still learning what’s supported here myself so if you…

  If you use a screen reader, there’s a good chance you’ve used a web technology known as a live region. The short version of what this technology does is that it allows web developers to have screen readers automatically read certain text. This might be automatic reading of chat messages in a chat environment, notification about the number of characters you’ve entered in an edit box as you type each character and much more.…

I am curious about the limits programmed into the different AI technologies. Ask the new Bing to write a country song on drinking or gambling and it will happily do so. Pick another mainstay of country music, cheating on your spouse, and you are told Bing isn’t able to do that and it is a behavior that shouldn’t be romanticized. Follow up asking for a country music song on guns though and Bing blasts away…

The age-old debate about the glass being half empty or half full is one I’ve had many times when discussing accessibility in both my personal and professional lives. For me it is true that technology has allowed me to do things that as a child I never thought would be possible. It is also true that technology, and the lack of accessibility at times, has cost me in multiple ways. Missed professional opportunities, judgement of…

The New Bing produces some interesting results when asking the technology to write news articles. I asked for a story on a hockey victory for the Wisconsin Badgers today along with an option for a different perspective on the story. I then asked for a story explaining the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Next I asked for predictions on the Milwaukee Brewers for the 2023 season. I closed out my use of Bing as a news…

Today I asked the New Bing to write a rock song on accessibility. This was pretty interesting for the result. Sent message. write a rock song about accessibility. a common rock song structure is verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge. Here is an example of a rock song I wrote using this structure: Verse 1: We live in a world that’s not made for us We face barriers every day We struggle to be heard and seen and valued We…

It is amazingly wrong that in 2023 we are still having to advocate for accessible currency in the U.S. Others have written more authoritatively on this, so I’ll just say enough already with the delays, excuses and more. The rally takes place Saturday March 10 in Washington DC and is coordinated by the American Council of the Blind. Full details are at https://acb.org/currency-rally.