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ATFAQ025-03-14-16
Show notes:
Panel: Brian Norton, Mark Stewart, Belva Smith, and Wade Wingler
Q1. Are there audio tutorials for the NVDA screen reader? – http://accessibilitycentral.net/nvda%20audio%20tutorials.html
Q2. Any suggestions for a password manager?
Q3. Do you know of any accessible travel websites? http://www.acb.org/node/1643#Travel%20Agencies/Services
Q4. How different is Windows 10 from Windows 7?
Q5. Is there a TV remote app that can be Voice activated?
Q7. Wild card: guide dog exemption for UK taxi drivers (see Twitter feed for INDATA)
Send your questions: 317-721-7124 | tech@eastersealscrossroads.org | Tweet using #ATFAQ
WADE WINGLER: Welcome to ATFAQ, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions with your host Brian Norton, Director of Assistive Technology at Easter Seals Crossroads. This is a show in which we address your questions about assistive technology, the hardware, software, tools and gadgets that help people with disabilities lead more independent and fulfilling lives. Have a question you’d like answered on our show? Send a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ, call our listener line at 317-721-7124, or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. The world of assistive technology has questions, and we have answers. And now here’s your host, Brian Norton.
BRIAN NORTON: Hello and welcome to ATFAQ episode 25. I’m your host Brian Norton. Today I’m in the studio with three of my colleagues. I got Belva Smith who is the guru of all things low vision here with us.
BELVA SMITH: Hi Brian.
BRIAN NORTON: How’s it going? Also have Mark Stewart here. Mark is the guru of all things physical and mental impairments and cognition types of technologies.
MARK STEWART: I had better go watch a couple YouTube videos and do some reading. Hey everybody.
BRIAN NORTON: Nothing like building up before that. I also have Wade Wingler here. Wade Wingler is the host of the popular podcast AT update.
WADE WINGLER: Hey everybody.
BRIAN NORTON: Today we have lots of different questions. This is ATFAQ, assistive technology frequently asked questions. That kind of tell you all you need to know about our show. We accept questions throughout the week from listeners all over the country. They submitted those through voicemail. You can call give us a call on our listener line at 317-721-7124. You can also email us at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Or you can actually send us a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ. All those come to us throughout the week from our listening audience. We look at those questions and come up with a show and try to give our best interest for those. But we always encourage audience predict participation. We want our audience to chime in. Maybe add some color and life to the questions we give an answer to give, maybe fill in the blanks for things we don’t know. If you are listening, look at it from that perspective. If you have questions, give us a call. But if you also have an answer that you would like to chime in with, please give us a call on as well and we’ll add that to our next show.
WADE WINGLER: So what you’re really saying is they can be part of the solution or part of the problem depending on what they want to ask when the call, right?
BRIAN NORTON: That’s right, absolutely.
BELVA SMITH: And did you tell them it is up so 25?
BRIAN NORTON: It is episode 25. We’ve been doing this for a year now. We are just coming up on our year anniversary. We are excited that you folks have taken the time to download our podcast and listen to us and we are excited to see this thing grow.
WADE WINGLER: Will there be cake?
BRIAN NORTON: There is no cake today. Maybe next week. Maybe next time we record. Without further ado, we’ll jump in.
We did get some feedback from a question from our last episode. It was from a lady named Kelsey. She is from Mount Hood community college, and this is what she wrote in an email to us. She says, I was listening to the first question of the 24th episode of ATFAQ, and it made me think of something I found the while ago. Have you heard of and you app toolbars? They are a collections of three assistive technology apps gathered into toolbars based on different needs. I have experiments to do with them and have been very pleased with the quality of the apps they put in the toolbars. If we go back to the first question of episode 24 just so you guys have some reference point there, —
WADE WINGLER: Was that the one about low-cost or free alternative screen magnifiers?
BRIAN NORTON: Yes. Are there free or low-cost alternatives for Zoom text screen magnification software. I don’t know. I myself had any personal experience with the Ed-U apps. I did take a look at them after I received the feedback and they do look very interesting. I think I’m going to take some time to jump in and dig into them a little bit more. They seem to be just a whole host of different free add-ins to your web browser that you can take advantage of.
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BRIAN NORTON: I want to thank Kelsey for giving us a call and chime in with that question. I appreciate that. Our first question for today is, is there any place to get audio tutorials or training materials to learn how to use the NVA screen reader? I’ll open that up to the panel.
BELVA SMITH: Why, yes. Actually if you go to the NVDA website, they have a link to their tutorials. But you can also go to YouTube which is what I would suggest going and looking for the NVDA screen reader. You will find many different not only for NVDA and screen reader tutorials.
BRIAN NORTON: Okay.
MARK STEWART: Is there a particular website? Is it just NVDA?
BELVA SMITH: You can Google NVDA, and also I think accessibility Center.net/NVDA —
WADE WINGLER: We’ve got the better link in the show notes.
BRIAN NORTON: we will stick it there.
BELVA SMITH: Let’s take it in the show notes.
BRIAN NORTON: For those that don’t know, NVDA — Belva, help me out with the acronym. What does it stand for?
BELVA SMITH: I say it stands for Non-Visual Desktop Application.
WADE WINGLER: Non-Visual Desktop Access.
BELVA SMITH: We had this discussion before.
BRIAN NORTON: There are a whole lot of different ways people do that. I was out of it as nonvisual display access. I guess there is any number of ways you can look at that. But it is screen reader. It is for folks who are either blind or have very low vision to be able to get access to their computer. It requires the user to be able to use audio output only on their computer, so as you navigate and use your keyboard to navigate to the computer system, it gives you spoken feedback for where you are and also what can be done next from whatever function or command that you are on. That is NVDA. Accessibility\center.net. We will stick a link in our show notes to where you can find some tutorials for that.
WADE WINGLER: One of the interesting things as may be a follow-up to that, I know NVDA is used as a screen reader by users who are blind or visually impaired. More and more I am finding that people who are cited are using it to do website testing for accessibility so that if you don’t want to spend $1000 on a screen reader, a lot of folks are downloading NVDA. It makes me wonder if those are different tutorials. If you’re going to use NVDA to do word processing and know for yourself, that might be one thing, but if you just want to use it as a tester, I wonder if there are different tutorials for that.
BELVA SMITH: There absolutely is. If you go to YouTube, if you’re looking to use it as a testing tool, then that is what you should try to find. Also when you go to YouTube, you are going to find, if you do NVDA screen reader, you will pull ups tutorials for almost all of the screen readers, because they are all so similar.
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BRIAN NORTON: Don’t forget if you have a question that you’ve been dying to ask, you can give us a call on our listener line at 317-712-7124. Our next question today is, I’m looking for the best password manager for my computer. I have too many passwords to remember, and they seem to be getting more and more complicated. Now they are requiring things like eight digits, one has to be capital letter, one character, etc. Any suggestions?
BELVA SMITH: Some of my consumers think I am their password manager. They will call me and think what was my password. I like last pass. There are two versions of the last pass. There is a free one and a paid version.
BRIAN NORTON: I find it a little frustrating on my side. I can side with whoever asks this question just simply because even here at my workplace, every seven weeks they asked me to change my password. I can’t use any other password I have used ever in the past, so I’m continually having to think of new things to put in there. I’m just running out of creative way to get a password. When I do put anyone in, if I don’t save it to something – I use last pass as well. It seems to work really well for me. But if I don’t say it, I’m kind of screwed. I don’t know what is going to be like. I can’t remember it the next time I go to that particular app location.
BELVA SMITH: You can do what I use to do is have a document called passwords and save it on your desktop.
WADE WINGLER: Hide it under your keyboard.
BRIAN NORTON: There is a tried and true password management system, right?
MARK STEWART: You can password protect it.
WADE WINGLER: Exactly. I am aware of OnePass as a popular one, but I have been using last pass for several years now and I like it. You can get it for Mac or Windows. The thing I like about it is, if listeners aren’t familiar, you just have to memorize one password, one pretty good password, and then that gets into your last pass system. From there not only does it keep track of all of her passwords, but it will randomly generate passwords. So I don’t know what most of my password are anymore. I didn’t generate most of my passwords, so I went last pass on my Mac. I also went on my iPhone. When I signed up for a website and it asked me to create a password, I just tell it it needs to be between eight and 12 characters and include capitals and special characters but don’t include numbers. There are checkboxes. Once I set those checkboxes to match what the website requires, it generates a random password for me. Then I say use that one and it saves it into its vault. Want to go back to that website, it pops up and there is an option where I can click and have it automatically put in my username and my funky weird password that I never really knew what it was. I have to say the first time I thought about that, it sort of freaked me out because I thought, if last pass fails, how my going to get this out of character string that nobody ever thought of before? Well I realized I’m going to hit “forgot my password” which is on the website which is what I would’ve done if I didn’t know my password, if I had forgotten it on that website anyway. It will shoot back then this character sequence that last pass keep track of. I don’t use regular passwords anymore. I have everything in last pass. All I have to do is remember my master password which is chocolate42seven — no, it’s not.
BRIAN NORTON: Nice. Write that down really quick.
BELVA SMITH: Just what you mentioned, it did happen a couple years ago. One of the password manager companies to go under and people were freaking out because some of them were warned – I guess everyone was warned – but some of them didn’t pay attention, so suddenly one day it was gone. But they all just had to forget their passwords and start over again.
WADE WINGLER: most of these services do this as well. Not only do I have my passwords in there, but I have secure notes and there is also my will is in there, or it got one that I keep on my favorite which is my medication list. I don’t know how many times you go to the doctor and they are like write down all your medications and you want to know all the details, what is a spelling and how do you take it and what is the dosage and all that stuff. So I started putting stuff in there like that as well. the other thing I started putting in there is when you download software and you pay for shareware but then you register it and they send you this email that shows your name and the license code and all that kind of stuff, I just copied those into secure notes as well so that they are not passwords that I use all the time , when I get a new computer I need to install software, I’m like where was that email that had the code or whatever, I just put all that stuff in there as well. The trick is you don’t want to. the bargain-basement password manager company like you said, Belva. You don’t want to. the one that will go out of business and has on all of your information. You want to. one that will continue to be there. You do have to rely on them and trust them to keep all of your stuff in there.
BELVA SMITH: I think one of those features you are just talking about are specific to last pass. I don’t think a lot of the password managers allow the secure notes and stuff like that.
WADE WINGLER: I know last pass and OnePass do. Those are the ones I pay attention to.
BRIAN NORTON: Is last pass free or does it cost? Is there a subscription?
BELVA SMITH: There is or use to be a free version, but it’s limited. Some of the features that Wade was just speaking about are only available in the paid version.
WADE WINGLER: So there is free, premium, and enterprise but you get the basic functionality on the free one. It is not until you want to synchronize your passwords across all of your phones and computers and devices, or you need things like desktop application passwords like or unlike for a login screen or whatever, that you need to have the premium version. I used the view one for a long time and was happy with it, but I thought the premium one, the paid one, just because I wanted to support them. I thought it was a good enough idea to kick in a little bit.
BRIAN NORTON: My next question would be, what do you say to the people that are skeptical? You are putting your passwords into a cloud-based system and we here day after day, week after week, about systems getting hacked and all these usernames and passwords have now been leaked to different places. What do you say to the person who doesn’t want to trust a password manager? Obviously is not the person that called in, and that maybe wasn’t his question pure
WADE WINGLER: My response would be what are you doing now? Describe to me what your security looks like now. My guess is that – and this is a made-up number – but the 18 PhD security people at last pass probably have thought of a better way to handle all this then you have by your password document on your desktop or writing them down or using the same password over and over again. I guess I would say what are using now and is this better or not.
BELVA SMITH: I think I would say what was said to me very many years ago: you either take the chance or you don’t take the chance. If like Wade said you’re not going to take that chance, what are you going to do, but it down and leave it on a piece of paper so anyone can see it? Or not write it down and forget it?
BRIAN NORTON: Just to recap for everyone, last pass is obviously one that we have had experience with. Are there other ones you mentioned?
WADE WINGLER: OnePass is the other one.
BRIAN NORTON: So one pass and last pass would definitely be wants to check out.
MARK STEWART: Microsoft Word you can password protect. It is encrypted to a certain degree. We are making an assumption here that that is not —
BELVA SMITH: They are looking for a password manager. They are not looking for a password. They are looking for a manager, one that will keep all of their passwords for everything.
MARK STEWART: Which word can you do but you can keep a list and search by find. But I am saying —
BRIAN NORTON: My wife keeps a word document that’s what she has.
BELVA SMITH: And she has a password-protected.
WADE WINGLER: In theory.
BELVA SMITH: And that’s what I did before last pass. I just had a word document and it was called password. You opened it up and everything I had to have a password to was on that one document. But I could only get to that document from my computer, so if I’m away from home and I need to get my password to get into WVC, I have to get that document that is on – if I have last pass, I’m just going to last pass, there it is.
MARK STEWART: So word doesn’t have a lot of these features. That is one level. But I’m also just wondering how secure it is in the sense that if it is totally encrypted, like for example these companies are keeping up with the highest levels of encryption we are assuming so that they can even do their thing on the cloud. Well if word is on the PC, it needs to be essentially as encrypted because someone can get in remotely. That’s the concern if they get into your stuff, if it is just a regular word document, that’s not very secure if you go onto the Internet. But if you password protect a word document, are you very well secure now even if some go snooping around your computer or are you not because it is a very basic encryption?
WADE WINGLER: It depends on if you are encrypting just the word document? is the volume on your computer also encrypted? What does the login to the computer look like? I think one of the main things as the services offer a whole lot more related to that. they monitor the fact that you are on a webpage and you’ve been here before, and you have logged in here before, would you like me to supply your password. It keeps track as you’re creating new accounts and just drop them into —
MARK STEWART: Much more functionality pure
WADE WINGLER: It is convenient. So it is the security but it is so convenient also.
BELVA SMITH: And if your computer crashes, you will lose that word document more than likely. this stuff is stored safely in the cloud.
BRIAN NORTON: That does bring up a good point because if it is auto populating auricular recognizing the pages you are on, when you’re done web browsing for the day or for a particular session, you need to log out of your password manager because of someone picks up your computer and walks away, they are going to have access to all of that stuff and just say auto fill on this particular page.
WADE WINGLER: Last pass has some settings where you can save log me back out after X many minutes or log me out every so often. I pulled up PC Magazine, they have a comparison here of best password managers and 2016. There are a few that are noteworthy. the top 3 Are Dashed Ln., last pass, and sticky password premium. They range from $12 per year to $40 per year. They all very much have the same features in those top three.
BELVA SMITH: Dashed Lane is rather new isn’t it?
WADE WINGLER: I’m not sure if it is or not . never used it . but PC Magazine has a pretty good grade here.
BELVA SMITH: I usually trust them pick
WADE WINGLER: They are pretty good resource.
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BRIAN NORTON: Don’t forget if you have a question, you can give us an email or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Or if you have some feedback over our previous question, don’t forget to send us that as well. you can do that at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Our next question is from Dean. This is a voicemail that we received pure
SPEAKER: Hello, my name is Jean and I just discovered the AT FAQ show today. I’ve been a listener of the assistant ecology update for a long time. I do have a question for the AT FAQ show. I am blind, and I don’t know how many people like you guys travel, but I need to travel to a convention this summer in Minneapolis. I’m looking at flight schedules, and some of these websites can be accessible. some of them not so much. I need to know, I am looking for the cheapest flight but none stop and round-trip if possible. Are there any websites that help with that? I will be staying for more than a week in Minneapolis this summer in July, and I’m planning it right now just to get everything, purchased tickets. I want to know these things. Thank you. I’ll talk to you later.
BRIAN NORTON: Just a couple of things I would want to know a little bit more information about from Jane is what type of assistive technology is using and specifically what websites has she been going to. As you know, travel websites, there are lots of different forms, fields, drop-down boxes, things like that. I would assume some are tricky to navigate using a screen reader. If Jane is visually impaired or using a screen reader for accessing those sites, they can be pretty challenging. A couple of resources I would throw out there initially: the American Council for the blind has a travel resource page. We can stick a link in our show notes for that pic that might be a great resource to look down through travel agents who work specifically with folks with disabilities and might be able to point you in the right direction to get some assistance in getting through some of those sites I don’t know. I will throw it out to the team pure
BELVA SMITH: I will say whenever we take a trip, Todd usually does all the planning period I don’t get involved until the day before when I start packing my suitcase and say where are we going. He does have — Todd is low vision and uses them text. he does have some websites that he simply can’t use. that is with magnification. I can imagine how complicated it can be with some of them with a screen reader. Using voiceover – and again we don’t know what screen reader she was trying to use, nor do we know what type of difficulty she was experiencing . but I did, using was over, glanced at Kayak and then airfare which cut to get to airfare.com what I put in was TWA and that just took me to airfare.com which is the Transworld airline. I was able to navigate that page just fine. You get to start out choosing whether you’re doing a round-trip, one way. you put in your departure time, what airport you’re departing from, which when you land at. It went through fairly easily. And to play up what you said, Brian, I also found in looking for the right answers for this individual, I also found that there are travel agents that work specifically with people with disabilities. I noticed that they will help you plan your trip from start to finish and make sure you have whatever assistance you need, where it is you’re going. to find those, what I did was I googled accessible travel agents, and that took me to executiveclasstravelers.com where you can find a whole list of them and maybe choose one that is in your area.
WADE WINGLER: Recently I’ve been using a lot of websites to book travel. XP has been one of my favorites for a long time.
BELVA SMITH: Todd does not like that one pure
WADE WINGLER: I am not a screen reader user nor do I use assistive technology on a daily basis . but even when I was booking some flights recently, I noticed how frustrating in terms of usability it was. Once you got to the point where it was listing out flights which for me is what I wanted. I once to go, put in where I’m starting and where I’m going and what days. I want it to make a list for me. Normally I want it to sort either lowest price to highest price or shortest duration to longest duration because it want to spend my life on a plane. It constantly is updating the list, so it does this life thing where it will sort them one way, but then it will on the fly resorts and resorts in a weird environment. Without using assistive technology, I can’t say stop that pic just give me the list and I will look at it manually. it sort of takes control of the browser and content and is doing some weird constantly updating thing. I haven’t tried it with a screen reader pure, in the pop open voice over on my Mac, but I did sic the Wave toolbar on it just to see what it would do in terms of accessibility. Their main page on Expedia came back okay, but there were some issues though relatively few. When I tried around the wave toolbar on the list of flights, they won’t even run it. it’s like the blog and can’t get a hold of it and reload the page and parse it out to see what’s going on there. The experience is amazing because it will slice and dice information for you, but I am having some accessibility problems with it as I look at it and I can just imagine if you rely on a screen reader alone that you probably wouldn’t be able to use the site. It is very frustrating.
BELVA SMITH: I think that is why Todd doesn’t use that anymore, because he used to use it pure it’s getting the initial information that isn’t the problem pure it is when it brings back the results because it takes him a while to look to the list, even though he looked doesn’t look all the way through. He will only get through two or three of them in the whole page is refreshed, information is all different, and his back to square one pure
BRIAN NORTON: You mentioned the wave toolbar. Is that something that is baseline accessibility? Can you run that on any webpage you go to? If you are visually impaired or a person who is blind, can use it as a baseline? Can this website work for me? Can it not?
WADE WINGLER: The wave toolbar is something that I use when I’m just looking at websites to talk about are they accessible or not pure there is a website you can go to, wave.webaim.org. You can plug in a website address and it will overlay and reload that page and put red and yellow and green icons that tell you where there are accessibility problems pure sometimes I use the Firefox browser with that toolbar plug-in so that I can do a little more in depth pure it doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about accessibility , it will do a thing where it shows the website in text only so it will pull out all the graphics so you only see what a screen reader would see pure it will also allow you to look at the webpage and outline view so you can see if your header tags are in the right order and all that kind of stuff. That’s what I do as a down and dirty, is this website grossly out of accessibility or not pure once I get to that, I start looking with a screen reader to figure out more about the accessibility pick all that to say I can’t even get the basic tool to run on Expedia right now. It just won’t load the page. There is something going on there that I think causes accessibility issues pure I wonder if others are finding that also pure
BRIAN NORTON: It sounds like more of a developer tool then maybe just your average user tool.
WADE WINGLER: Is not really an AT tool pure it’s for someone who is reviewing the website content for accessibility.
WADE WINGLER: We should plug our full day training. I don’t know if you had that on the script today. We are hosting a free webinar on April —
BRIAN NORTON: It’s actually May 11.
WADE WINGLER: May 11, 2016 pure we are doing a free full day training for developers. If you are a programmer or someone who is into developing websites, on May 11 we will be doing a webinar pick we will have Dennis Embry who was famous from doing accessible twitter and Web ex. He is a web accessibility guru. He’s going to be doing a full day training for us. There is no cost. If you want to register for that, head over to our website at www.eastersealstech.com/a11y. That will take you right to the page with our web accessibility resources and also a link to that free webinar pick we would love to have people join us that they pure Dennis will be doing the training but I think Brian and I will be in the audience moderating that they pure if you’re interested in this topic, we’ve got a free for the training coming up pure it will be great.
BRIAN NORTON: It’s important to know it’s for developers and programmers. It’s not the basics. It’s high level web accessibility, building it into your content.
WADE WINGLER: If you are coming to the training and you haven’t built a website before in the past, it is probably not the right training for you because we are going to start with the assumption that you have built some websites that you really want to know how to make them more accessible pure
BELVA SMITH: Before we leave and go to the next question, I just want to throw one more piece of advice out for our caller. May be using the mobile version of whatever site she is trying to access, that could be why I had such good luck trying to do it, because I was on a mobile version using my iPhone with voiceover. Maybe trying to use the mobile version because that is always going to be less polluted.
BRIAN NORTON: So if you have a tablet or phone —
BELVA SMITH: You can sometimes even do it on your computer. If you put an “M” in front of it, I think it is.
WADE WINGLER: m.google.com for example.
BRIAN NORTON: Interesting. If other folks in our listening community have answers or different experiences on different travel websites, lets us know pure? We would love to get Jane some interesting information on that.
***
BRIAN NORTON: Our next question is, functionally speaking, how different is Windows 10 from Windows 7 professional? The listener went on to say my computer crashed dust after I made a backup on Saturday. This was a week or so ago. I’m wondering if I should just jump to Windows 10 if it is not a big functional difference. Like going from XP to Windows 7? Your input is very greatly appreciated, thank you pure I will throw that out to the team. How much functional differences are there between Windows 10 and Windows 7?
BELVA SMITH: So do you think they are saying they felt like going from XP to 7 was a huge jump in?
BRIAN NORTON: I think so. That’s my assumption pure
BELVA SMITH: And that is the case, then I would say that they are probably going to find going from 7 to 10 to be a huge jump. Was that being said, I would still encourage them to go ahead and take the jump to 10. The reason being is that they are going to stop supporting 7 soon or sooner than we would like. I always try to encourage folks to move forward with Microsoft because they don’t usually go back. When I say usually go back, they have tried to incorporate some of the things that were so well-liked in 7 into 10, like the start menu. I would encourage them to go ahead and take that jump. This is a good time to go ahead and say that maybe perhaps before making that jump they might want to go to their local tech act like for us it would be in data, borrow a computer that has Windows 10 so they can actually experience it with whatever their assistive technology might be. I don’t know if they are using something for vision or something for voice recognition, but maybe trying it first would make them be able to make a better educated decision.
MARK STEWART: I read the question differently. I read her as saying move from XP to 7 was relatively okay.
BELVA SMITH: In that case I think 7 to 10 would be just fine.
MARK STEWART: The stuff I will say now is in a lot of the summaries and common descriptions of the transfer. Windows 10 has a type of view. Windows 10 is trying to handle both mouse or mouse emulated inputs much better than Windows 8 did, but it is also trying to handle touch. That is a little bit different, that tile layout. Part of what we are talking here is what her access method is, what her learning style is. It will look more different than — 7 looked more like XP than 10 looks like 7. 10 looks quite a bit different. But it is much more user-friendly for the mass user and that should have the capabilities of being able to do things with the mouse. Wouldn’t you guys agree that we are kind of finding that, yes, everything Belva said, the push towards Windows 10. Security settings, Belva wouldn’t you agree, is another aspect for that? You sort of need to go with it or realize that you’re going to be going with it because Windows 10, most of the emphasis towards maintaining security settings and things like that moving forward is with Windows 10. But haven’t we been finding some issues and some glitchy nests with drivers and things like that that actually people were hoping wasn’t going to be that much of a case with the rollout of Windows 10 pure it was pretty well received as far as the hope with the rollout. But there have been some things. There’s going to be some trade-offs.
BELVA SMITH: I don’t think there has been a big difference in the drivers issue. I think every new operating system has had some driver issues. I get to go from XP to seven, my printer won’t work anymore, I have to get a new printer now. I have to go from 7 to 10, my scanner is not going to work. I have to get a new one. I think that has always kind of been the case. For my listeners — when I say “my”, I mean the visually impaired or blind. Mark mentioned that it looks different, and it does, but don’t let that scare you. Visually it does appear different but it still operates just fine with a screen reader. I still have people thinking that the screen readers are not the working with Windows 10, and they are. They’re working just fine.
MARK STEWART: I would say broad strokes, it’s the same for physical. There is a learning curve. Things aren’t exactly where you wanted them. It’s like why did they have to change this? It is partly to handle both touch users and mouse users. If you’re not a touch user, then you will sit there saying why do I have to do this. You may like it better once you get that motor learning aspect of it handled, because the tiles might be easy to click, things like that.
BRIAN NORTON: I would just venture to say that dust all of our listeners, any time you move operating systems, it’s going to be uncomfortable.
BELVA SMITH: It’s scary.
BRIAN NORTON: You will be looking for something and not be able to find it for the life of you. However, I would say no more than ever, there are really helpful transition user guides on the web. If you go in and Google Windows 10 or moving from Windows 7 to Windows 10, you will get some pretty robust learning content, training materials that will help you adjust to the new environment and figure out where things are and how to find things. It will be different. It’s going to be uncomfortable. But as Belva mentioned, and Mark was also mentioning, you’re going to have to keep up. You’re going to have to keep up because eventually – I don’t know what is happening in July, but one of the operating systems for Windows isn’t going to be supported anymore. Is that right?
BELVA SMITH: It’s actually next July when Windows 7 will no longer be supported. So we had a little over a year left that they are going to support it. And by support, what does that really mean? What that really means is that they won’t be writing any more security protection for that program. You’re not going to be able to call them and say Windows 7 isn’t doing this or it isn’t doing that. They are going to say no kidding, you should be using when it’s 10. That’s why they are putting that big push out there right now to get everyone to come on board with Windows 10, because they really want to see, really really want to see what is a go away. They would love to see Windows 7 go away as well. Brian, I think you were the one who came in and said if there’s not ever going to be another Windows. It is Windows 10 from here on out. That’s kind of their plan. They are just going to keep writing new, whatever you call it.
BRIAN NORTON: Updates.
BELVA SMITH: Updates for Windows 10. So we won’t have a Windows 12 like we had from 95 on up. Each new change has been scary for me. I hated to let go of windows XP. Windows 7 seems so scary, and I look back on it and that is just so funny to me. Why was Windows 7 scary?
BRIAN NORTON: I think as far as functionally how different it is, I really think it is just the aesthetics of the software. I think in the background a lot of the information is still where it used to be. There is a file Explorer; you can look to your computer just like you did before. Mark, you mentioned the touchscreens and these life piles out there that are just bigger spaces for programs on your desktop or this tile area where you can just reach up and touch it with your finger. That is the difference. Aesthetically it looks different, but I think in the background I think it’s pretty much still the same.
BELVA SMITH: Functionally I think it is all going to be the same. You may notice some improvement in some of the areas. A couple of things you will notice missing totally, Windows media player. That is gone, right? There is no Windows media player in Windows 10.
BRIAN NORTON: But they included Cortana which is pretty cool.
MARK STEWART: And they will go to the edge browser.
BRIAN NORTON: Getting rid of Internet Explorer.
BELVA SMITH: Internet Explorer is still there but they want you to use edge. Functionally I think you will still be able to do all of the same things. Hopefully some things will be better.
BRIAN NORTON: I use a Mac.
BELVA SMITH: I use a Mac and I use Windows and I love them both.
WADE WINGLER: You run Windows on your Mac.
BELVA SMITH: But my Mac at home I am not. I am using both. I love both.
MARK STEWART: We have been in the trenches. We address this question with most of our clients these days. Although it might not be sounding like it exactly, this is actually pretty current banter on the pros and cons of it. It kind of is the answer. You’ve probably heard it on the show a few times, was things like Vista, remember the way you ease to talk about the stuff? Our answers were pretty absolute. It was the latest thing, but please hold off from Vista; please hold off from Vista.
BRIAN NORTON: So slow.
BELVA SMITH: That’s what happened with Windows 8. They were so embarrassed by Mister that they pushed Windows 8 out, and then once Windows 8 got out there they were like what have we done. We have to hurry and get rid of this. Let’s hurry and get Windows 10 out there.
MARK STEWART: This Windows 10 think is a little bit more cerebral, or roll of the dice. I think you did hear some concrete things there. I had a client fairly currently because it was three months ago who has a moderate physical disability and is very computer savvy, tinkers around with computers at home all the time and likes to do that as a hobby. This really didn’t have to do with our project, it was just what he informed me when I want to see him. He had gone back and forth between Windows 7. He had loaded Windows 10 three times I think, and then said I don’t know. He reinstalled Windows 7 and then maybe I’ll try Windows 10.
BRIAN NORTON: Going back and forth.
***
BRIAN NORTON: Our next question is from Samantha. She sent us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ. Her question is, is there a TV remote app that can be voice activated? She is looking for a TV remote app, I’m assuming for a tablet or a mobile device obviously, that can be voice activated so she can operate her to be. I did a real quick research on the stuff and didn’t find any apps in my research, but I did find several voice activated either TV sets like Samsung, a lot of these Smart TV sets have voice activation with them, but also I found quite a few – I don’t know what to call them – the Amazon fire TV.
WADE WINGLER: Set-top boxes.
BRIAN NORTON: They go, set top boxes I guess is what they are called. They also offer some voice activation. I think in the latest Amazon fire TV, the actual box you can get, it comes with Alexa which is their voice assistant, to be able to operate your TV. Other input on that?
BELVA SMITH: We have the Comcast remote control that allows us to ask it —
WADE WINGLER: The X-1, right?
BELVA SMITH: Yes. You have to have the X-1 service, and they don’t really tell you about the remote so you have to call them and ask about it. There is a six dollar fee, one time, to get the remote shifts to you, but then there is no extra monthly cost. There is a little microphone button that you can activate and then do voice search and it will search everything. If you tell it you want to find Andy Griffith, it will look everywhere to see where Andy Griffith is playing. Then of course we also have it talking to us so it comes back and gives us all the details about the show.
BRIAN NORTON: That’s great.
BELVA SMITH: We do have a Samsung, in fact we have three Samsung Smart TV’s. None of them allow us —
BRIAN NORTON: I think it’s some of the newer ones that come with voice input. I have a Samsung as well, one of our TVs is a Samsung, and it doesn’t do that. I didn’t pay the premium price for the really expensive ones.
WADE WINGLER: According to Mac Rumors, in the first half of 2016 the new Apple TV with Siri remote will also have voice activation as well. It sounds like it’s going to be – do you guys have it now? You can say show me a movie with Kevin Costner and will find them?
BELVA SMITH: Absolutely. We have both, the new Apple TV and the XFINITY X1 remote.
WADE WINGLER: So both of those are tied to a service then, to use the Comcast one you need to be a Comcast affinity X1 subscriber, and to do the Apple TV you had to at least have a broadband Internet connection. It will only give you access to things like Apple movie. Does it give access to Netflix now?
BELVA SMITH: Yes.
WADE WINGLER: So you can get Netflix and those kinds of things. But none of those are going to control your regular broadcast NBC, CBS, Fox, kind of stuff. I guess the Comcast would but you are paying for that.
BELVA SMITH: The Apple TV does it there is an NBC app. A couple of them have an app, so I think it is NBC and ABC. I don’t think Fox is on there yet. They will be included as well in the search.
BRIAN NORTON: For folks who are looking for a more sophisticated system, there are environmental control units out there. By mentioning app, I’m thinking we’re looking for something that is low cost, easy to use and things like that. Some of these environmental control units – there is a company in Chicago named Sage Technologies. We know them pretty well. We’ve got some of their stuff in our lab that we demonstrate for folks — where you can actually fully customize and automate your entire house including your TV by being able to change channels, up and down, the volume, all those kinds of things. But those can get quite expensive and quickly.
BELVA SMITH: I’m afraid that I might be missing her question here, because she’s saying voice activated. To use either the Apple remote or the X1, you have to first press that button. It’s not like I can just start talking and it will start listening to me. Now one of you mentioned the —
BRIAN NORTON: The Amazon requires a button push too.
BELVA SMITH: Does it?
BRIAN NORTON: Yes. It’s much the same as the Apple remote. It has a button where you press a microphone and after a second it pops up and says listening to you, but did you have to press a button. I wonder can you say hey Siri with the Apple TV?
BELVA SMITH: Know. You have to hit the button.
WADE WINGLER: That sort of makes sense. That requires your microphone to be open and your battery running all the time. I’m guessing, does that remote plug-in to charge or does it have batteries?
BELVA SMITH: I think it has batteries. So far we’ve been using it since Christmas and haven’t had to change it.
WADE WINGLER: It would kill your batteries if it was always on.
BRIAN NORTON: I think they are special batteries.
MARK STEWART: Logitech has a harmony smart home hub —
BELVA SMITH: I used to have that.
MARK STEWART: You can do some home control including the TV: turn on the TV, search for movies, things like that.
BRIAN NORTON: What’s it called again?
BELVA SMITH: Harmony.
MARK STEWART: Logitech Harmony.
BELVA SMITH: That used to be one of the best remotes there was out there about 10 years ago.
BRIAN NORTON: I just want to encourage any of our listeners out there, if you guys have any feedback or additional input for Samantha about a voice activated TV remote app or device or maybe desktop set —
WADE WINGLER: Set-top box.
BRIAN NORTON: There you go, set top box. I’ll get it right here in a minute. Let us know. We would love to pass it on to Samantha and fully answer her question.
MARK STEWART: When I was looking it up, I was thinking apps on a smartphone or something, so I’m a little bit behind the eight ball on doing it through a home hub. That may very well answer her question. What about Echo? We were educating people on the Echo a little bit the other day. Echo can be connected to the home. What about turning on the TV or using voice with echo?
WADE WINGLER: I haven’t messed with it yet. I don’t know.
BELVA SMITH: I don’t know if it would do it either, but I did want to also mention that XFINITY also does have an app that can be used on an iPad or an iPhone to control the TV, but it’s not the voice activated. Again you have to use some touch to get it to work with you.
BRIAN NORTON: It’s interesting, the echo, we have one in our lab now. You connected it to a lot of appliances so it will actually turn on lights and —
BELVA SMITH: Maybe it will turn on a TV then.
BRIAN NORTON: I’m sure there is a way to connect it in that way. We would have to look into that a little bit more to see if it would work.
WADE WINGLER: Mark, just a quick Google here says that there is a way to tie in Amazon echo, and the fire TV has some of that built-in voice searching as well. At some of the Amazon products may be doing a little bit of this as well.
BRIAN NORTON: The Amazon fire TV, the box, not the sticks that you stick in the back of your TV, the box itself actually has Alexa in it. They stuck her in a box and you just plug it into the back of your TV.
MARK STEWART: We don’t know, let’s say that she or someone she represents has perhaps a severe physical disability. Especially if we consider environmental control units, the folks like Sage and things like that, probably can’t be done, correct?
BRIAN NORTON: Oh, definitely. Their technology you can do anything. Infrared.
MARK STEWART: And through voice.
BRIAN NORTON: Everything is voice activated for them.
***
WADE WINGLER: And now it’s time for the wildcard question.
BRIAN NORTON: So our next question is from Wade. Wade is going to throw out our wildcard question of the week, an off-the-wall example of – I’m just kidding. I say that every week.
WADE WINGLER: It is off-the-wall this time.
BRIAN NORTON: He doesn’t show us these questions and we just have to guess and makeup enters on-the-fly.
WADE WINGLER: The ironic thing is the wildcard is designed so that we don’t have any chance to look at the question before we answer them. I sort of think that happens anyway on the regular questions. We don’t end up looking at them.
BELVA SMITH: That’s kind of good, right?
WADE WINGLER: Sometimes good, sometimes bad, so long as we are getting information out there. This blew up on Twitter last week. I treated a tweet from the UK that really got – especially some folks who are blind who you service animals really started fighting back with the headline here. It’s from the United Kingdom from the evening times, which I think is a London-based paper or Glascow. Here is the headline: “Taxi drivers to be given certificates allowing them to refuse to carry guide dogs.” Now listen. Taxi drivers could be handed certificates giving them the right to refuse to carry guide dogs on medical grounds. Currently all tax taxes es and private hires and Glascow must, according to the terms of their license, carry guide dogs, hearing dogs, or assistance dogs along disabled passengers. Their license states that they cannot charge extra money for this. But now drivers can apply for a dispensation from this condition if they had a medical illness which is aggravated by having a dog in the car. So we’ve got a really interesting situation here where we have competing disabilities almost. I’ve run into this in my world a couple of times doing job accommodation. What do you guys think about that? the idea that if you have a dog allergy – will be more specific than this thing, if you have an allergy to dogs and you are a taxi driver, and being in the presence of a dog really makes you sick, makes it unsafe, makes your eyes water, those kinds of things. Should you be allowed to refuse? And then it says they will have a printed placket on the dash, a tactile think they can show to a passenger, maybe a braille thing. If a writer is turned away by somebody they feel that didn’t have that special dispensation, then they are encouraged to turn them in and their license could be in jeopardy. The article is quick to note that it hasn’t been done. It’s being considered. Nobody has been given these passes yet, but it is something that is being kicked around in Scotland. What do you guys think?
BRIAN NORTON: You picked an easy one today, didn’t you?
WADE WINGLER: I like to make it easy.
BRIAN NORTON: Nothing like not wanting to talk to something with a 10 foot pole. I don’t know. For me, that whole competing disability piece, that’s the question. Can you medically prove to me that this is really something going on with you, and if so, what are your rights as a taxi cab driver to be able to say no to somebody?
BELVA SMITH: My first question would be who is dispatching this driver? Because it should be up to the dispatcher to say –
BRIAN NORTON: To ask the question.
BELVA SMITH: To ask the question: do you have a service animal? Okay, well I can only dispatch this group of drivers. Because I do think – and I would hope that the person with the service animal would look at it this way as well – I know for myself personally, I have a cat allergy. When I go — Friday, for example, I went into an apartment, a very tiny apartment, three or four – I don’t even know how many — cats. I suffered from that the rest of the evening. Is it fair to say to a driver that you must put this animal in your car when the dander and whatever comes off of them is going to be in that car? He’s probably going to have to get it cleaned to not suffer from it, or he is going to suffer from it or she is going to suffer from it for a couple of days. I think the driver has the right to say, as long as they have something displayed that says I am allergic to dogs so I shouldn’t have to carry. I would hope that the person with a service animal would understand that.
BRIAN NORTON: I think a lot of times a taxi cab, especially in a city like Indianapolis, they get dispatched two different places. We were just in Washington DC last week, weight and I, for a conference. You just sit there on a corner in your hail down a cab and the cab just runs right up to you and you jump in and it’s like, in those situations you’re not going to have that chance to have something prescreened out for you.
BELVA SMITH: But you can just keep on going without stopping.
BRIAN NORTON: They don’t have to stop.
BELVA SMITH: Wasn’t there just a huge discussion about this with Uber? Uber refusing to allow service animals in the vehicles. So there is supposed to be certain Uber drivers now that will transport the service animal, or that is in the making.
WADE WINGLER: I struggle with this, because I’m someone with significant dog allergies. I don’t even have to touch, but be near a dog for a little while. My eyes will swell shut, I sneeze, I have a hard time breathing, I have asthma. At the very same time, not a lot but a couple of times a year, I have friends who use guide dogs and ride in my car with them. Are you saying you need to have your car cleaned? I still have dog here in my car from the last time one of my friends who uses as a guide dog was riding in my car. I could easily say no, I’m not going to do that, and my friend would certainly understand that, but I don’t.
BELVA SMITH: But that’s different when it’s your friend. You are willing to suffer for your friend, maybe a little bit more than you are to do your job. I know to do my job, I’m not expected to put myself in harm’s way. Why would we expect a transportation, public transportation person to do that?
WADE WINGLER: But you did the job with the cats last week, right?
BELVA SMITH: That was my choice. I knew she had cats, and even went home and took an allergy pill before I went because I knew I’m going to pay for this the rest of the night.
MARK STEWART: That’s something right there. Especially on the wildcard questions, I love to let you guys go first as I formulate my answer.
BELVA SMITH: And then he starts waiting when he’s ready to step in.
BRIAN NORTON: He likes to see us stick our foot in the mud before he has to jump in.
WADE WINGLER: Let me tell you why you guys are dum-dums.
MARK STEWART: I agree with everything you guys are saying, not that that was the question whether I agree or not. I think the logic to this – and that actually probably the written legality is pretty well formulated out there. I don’t know about Scotland in particular. But I think it is there to be worked through, although it is very tricky and can be very emotional. People with disabilities want equal access. They want to be competitive. They don’t want to be better necessarily. They don’t want to belittle other human beings. So they should care about the taxi driver as well. But then if we look at trends in culture, I think a lot of consideration and conscientiousness should lean over the fence and the direction of advocating for people with disabilities. So I think we should have an awareness out there to be looking out for the person who has a severe disability and needs to ride. This should be a very formal screened process even with medical documentation, because this is on the job type stuff, backed up by laws and regulations. That formal access that we’ve worked so hard over decades to establish needs to be kept in place. But as things move along, new situations arise including, just as you are saying – the driver has a disability, I think there’s some room for some practical consideration of things like mild, moderate, severe. If you can go get your allergy pill and get it done, that’s the kind of thing where you shouldn’t be coming up with an excuse.
WADE WINGLER: And it makes you drowsy and you crash a car?
MARK STEWART: I was going to say you said your eyes get so watery? Those things really come up?
WADE WINGLER: Yeah.
MARK STEWART: It’s a little bit of a trip off of the basic ADA logic, but the idea of with or without reasonable accommodation. It is a reasonable accommodation to allow the dog in the car in most cases, and it probably depends on the degree of dog allergy, but if for example a taxi driver has a severe and profound dog allergy – we usually don’t think of them that way – but I have a cat allergy like that. I used to before shots and things like that. I know what that is like. Before I got the allergy shots, I would’ve been unsafe driving a car if somebody brought a therapy cat in. If that happens to be the case for this driver, then that would be unreasonable accommodation, and then they need to do the things like Belva is talking about, bringing in other drivers.
WADE WINGLER: I think matter of degree matters a whole lot in the situation. We talked about that in the show where health and safety trumps accommodation. You’re not going to do something that puts people in obvious danger in order to accomplish accommodation. We don’t want to do that. But there are matters of degree. The twitter conversation was fascinating because people started making comments like, wait a minute, it is not too hard to get your doctor to give you a note that says you got analogy, and if you take that to the licensing Bureau or whatever – one of the snarky or comment said wait a minute, I thought that they handed out dog allergies when you became a taxi driver because some taxi drivers apparently just don’t want dogs in their car because of the haircut because of the mess, because of the smell, because they are afraid of dogs or whatever. I think most people can understand a legitimate medical situation. If it really does make me sick and makes me unsafe to drive, then no, it doesn’t make sense. But what about that abuse, which might happen more often?
MARK STEWART: Yep.
BRIAN NORTON: Yes.
WADE WINGLER: Thanks, Brian. Thanks for your thoughtful response.
BRIAN NORTON: I think those are all really good comments. I just think that whole reasonable accommodation thing. I’ve been taught long ago, when you start talking about reasonable accommodations, I just need to be quite and let the lawyers figure it out. Who is to say if my opinion really amounts to what a reasonable accommodation is or isn’t and those kinds of things. I always get a little nervous about that.
MARK STEWART: It is very often legally considered case-by-case because there are nuances to it.
WADE WINGLER: The ADA is a complaint based law, so it has to get to the point to where they file a lawsuit before a judge may or may not decide to look at it.
BRIAN NORTON: I want to thank everybody for listening to us today. Again, here is how to find our show. You can search assistance technology questions on iTunes. You can look for us on stitcher, or visit us at ATFAQshow.com. Also send us your questions by calling our listener line at 317-721-7124. Send us a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ. Or email us at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. In fact, without your questions we really don’t have a show. So be a part of it. Also I just encourage you guys, if you guys have heard one of the questions and you have some helpful information to pass along to our callers and the other folks who have emailed in, please take time to do that as well. I want to thank everybody here in the city with me. Belva, I want to thank you. Have a great week.
BELVA SMITH: Thank you.
BRIAN NORTON: And Mark.
MARK STEWART: Thanks everybody.
BRIAN NORTON: And Wade as well.
WADE WINGLER: Had a good one.
BRIAN NORTON: All right. Take care and have a good one. We will talk to you guys in a couple weeks.
WADE WINGLER: Information provided on Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions does not constitute a product endorsement. Our comments are not intended as recommendations, nor is our show evaluative in nature. Assistive Technology FAQ is hosted by Brian Norton; gets editorial support from mark steward and Belva Smith; is produced by me, Wade Wingler; and receives support from Easter Seals Crossroads and the INDATA project. ATFAQ is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. Find more of our shows at www.accessibilitychannel.com.
