We were not sure we would have enough news to talk about this week. Then, thankfully, Amazon decided to announce a metric ton of stuff. This fits in perfectly with our topflight interview with the man himself at Top Dot, Dean Martineau. And we end the show with an all comment section filled "Sound Off", a new tip for Chrome along with food and an auditory odd link in the "Last Word".
In The News:
A New Feature makes the Amazon Echo Show More Useful for Blind Users
All of the headlines from Amazon s big hardware-focused event
Related to the talk about voice assistants, Celebrities Will Say Almost Anything on Cameo For The Right Price
KeySoft Version 3 for the BrailleNote Touch Plus brings more powerful tools to your fingers
First Public Beta of JAWS 2020 Posted with Improved OCR, Form Control Handling, More
FSCast 174 Eric Damery previews the first JAWS 2020 public beta,
Mozilla to release a new Firefox version every four weeks starting next year
Apple to Release iOS 13.1 and iPadOS 13.1 on 24 September; Bringing Many Bug Fixes and Some New
Seeing AI adds dark mode, Siri Shorcuts and more
Interview: Dean Martineau,
Trainer and Author, Dean Martineau, , has been providing the Blind and Low Vision Community with helpful information for more than 700 issues of the "Top Tech Tidd Bits" newsletter. He sits down with J.J. to discuss his new book entitled "windows Keyboard Power User Guide". Hear why Dean feels that these materials are important for refreshing, or maintaining, your skill levels. And don't be frightened by the titles mentioned during the look back at Dean's previous guides, historical documents?, he has produced over the decades. You can find more about Dean, and his training options, at the Top Dot Enterprises website. And you can purchase a copy of the book in the various formats mentioned during this interview.
Tip: Open Things Faster In Chrome
Chrome is a powerful browser. And it even gets better if you utilize other Google tools and services. J.J. tells us that you can open a new Google Doc by simply typing "docs.new" into the address bar. The same goes for Sheets, Slides and other G Suite services. Joe also passed along this tip about how to force Google Chrome into Dark Mode
Sound Off:
This week we feature three entries from our comment sections from an article about Talkback, a thought from episode 189 and a viewpoint about episode 188. Airshock has this to say about Talkback and the ability to start it easier on Android devices.
While this is a step forward, it's also sad that a simple feature like enabling or disabling your screen reader using voice control is just now coming to Android devices when iOS devices have had this feature for many years, and even macOS has had the same feature ever since Siri was introduced to the operating system sin 2016.
Greg Epley had this to say about our conversations on episode 189.
I was so disgruntled to hear J.J.'s difficulties signing up for CBS All Access. I myself started with them back in May 2016. I was most likely using IE as my browser of choice then, or perhaps Firefox; anyway, one of those. I am not always the most patient person in the world when it comes to poorly designed web forms since I once created websites. As recently as a few days ago, I went in and changed my payment method and password, and the only problem I ran into was forgetting that not all special symbols are available on TvOS remote keyboard. But I got it straightened out. I am hoping CBS gets this audio description thing worked out in time for Star Trek: Piccard in 2020, but I'm not holding my breath. I didn't really care for Discovery, or Enterprise, for that matter, but I also don't like absolutely everything Star Trek.
Orko returns to our feedback section with this comment regarding episode 188.
Hi Joe! I was very interested to hear that Ricki (I hope I spelled that correctly) got a Color Star color identifier because I had bought one several months ago. I agree that it is a bit over priced at $450, I also agree with Ricki in that I do not regret the purchase. It quickly became my favorite color identifier, so much so that I sold off all of the other color identifiers I had collected over the years. I will be looking forward to hearing what she has to say about it.
Last Word:
Things that can go in your ears, things that will make you cover up your ears and something you can put behind your ears. Okay, maybe not that last one.
Worst... Cover... Ever!
New Device Could Let People Unlock Smartphones With Their Ears
Candy Corn Pizza: The Halloween Treat You Never Asked For
(Bonus: The first 15 seconds of this track was the stuff of nightmares each time you entered the elevator at the summer NFB convention in Las Vegas
This week Amazon brought the fire, and a whole lot of other products, to the news section. Next week, in BBQ 194, we'll see if Microsoft can do the same.
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Joe Steinkamp is no stranger to the world of technology, having been a user of video magnification and blindness related electronic devices since 1979. Joe has worked in radio, retail management and Vocational Rehabilitation for blind and low vision individuals in Texas. He has been writing about the A.T. Industry for 15 years and podcasting about it for almost a decade.
