@Podder Community July 2007

Using Podcasts to Support Partially Sighted Individuals

apodder.org offers several forms of information and software to help partially sighted people use podcasts for enjoyment, information, and inspiration:

The @Podder podcatcher uses a blend of high contrast user interface, keyboard or mouse interaction, and feedback by synthetic voice -- dubbed "Easy Viewing". A new version of @Podder will be available mid-September while the current version is function and available for free dload. @Podder will retrieve podcasts, invoke a media player for listening, and assist in managing growing collections of podcasts of value.
apodder.org fosters the view that podcasts are valuable replacements for magazines, newspapers, and video media for print-disabled individuals. High value medical news, interviews with visually impaired people, podcasts by and for blind people, disability issues, nd assistive product demonstration and evaluation podcasts are being collected, using @Pocder, into a library available as HTML files that require no software beyond an audio-enabled browser. This library of over 1000 podcasts will be released in topic areas over the coming months, linked here.
The founder of apodder.org offers personal experience with technology,organizations, and philosophical musings from a long period of degenerating vision. Presented as a blog, "As Your World Changes", tagline "Adjusting to Vision Loss with Class, "uning technology", built around the podcast library and the @Podder software. Current topics include" magnifiers, text readers, Bookshare.org and reading appliances, 5 tenets for adjusting to low vision, seeing through Google Book Search, surviving application updates, lucky timing at the era of podcasts, mdsupport.org support for macular degenerates, ...

Past podcasts and links are listed below for the record while the new "apodder.org" is under development.

September, 2006

See this podcasts on vision-related topics -- (700 selected from 3000)
organized by tags (keywords) many found by audio using the Podzinger search service.

@Podder users: import these eyesight related podcast feeds (40 in OPML) and and tags related to eyesight and podcasting.

@Podder Reviews and Mentions: Softpedia, Lighthouse, BlindNews, Utah Technology Coalition, Fred's Head Database, Disability411 (#8), Ask a Therapist , NosillaCast

Podcast "As Your World Changes" (Eyesight and Podcasting)

More coming soon: text-to-speech applications for everybody, updates on @Podder, reviews of great podcasts on eyesight

2006

Episode 3 (February 23)
Reviews of Disability 411, Google Petition Plea, Podcast recommendations (Word Nerds, Daily Breakfast), apodder.org vision podcast directory, and HTML Show Notes in @Podder
Play MP3 -- Notes

2005

Episode 1 (June 12)
Theme, podcasts about eyesight, podcasters about accessibility, and good listening. (Play MP3) -- Notes
Episode 2 (Jun e 21)
Updates, Accessibility in PDF, and @Podder Features (Play MP3) -- Notes

Episode 3: (Feb. 23 2006) Vision-related podcasting, Google petition, @Podder tip on HTML show notes

Reviews of Disability 411, Google Petition Plea, Podcast recommendations (Word Nerds, Daily Breakfast), apodder.org vision podcast directory, and HTML Show Notes in @Podder.

Vision-Related Podcasting

Disability 411 (http://disability411.jinkle.com) offers advice and interviews from Beth Case, a disability counselor in the Houston area. Show #7 is an interview with a Disability Law Resource Center lawyer who describes not only the legal aspects of disability law but also how to handle a job interview with confidence. Assuming you know the nature of the job and that you can do it (better before), still lot of mundane problems, like finding rooms, handling cafeteria trays, and shaking hands.
Darrell Shandrow from Blind Access Journal is leading an effort to encourage "Do No Evil" Google and other web service providers to find an anti-spam alternative other than CAPTCHA those funny-looking words that you must copy to access a service. The word access verification petition at http://www.blindwebaccess.com has over 4000 signers. His blog discusses why CAPTCHA is such a problem and some possible solutions. Good article in Internet News Feb. 17 entitled, sadly, "Google's doors still shut to the blind.:" This petition is very reasonable, respectful, and addressed to whole industry. My summary of the need is three-fold: (1) social justice, fairness to all, whether or not the laws are being enforcedeca; (2) social opportunity, because general rule, eliminating a barrier for one group of people usually makes technology better for everybody, (3) good technology challenge, alternative to beheading spammers.

Our podcast theme is "As Your World Changes", that those of us partially sighted often find vision, computer tools, and world at large always changing. One of our goals at apodder.org is to make it easier to adapt to these changes. Sometimes we have to be more demanding of the world, asking for reasonable changes like alternatives to word verification barrier.

Great podcast series Recommendations (not vision-related)

The Word Nerds are 3 teacher-type guys who pick a weekly cultural theme. such as "color metaphors", and tell you the background of words in that and work category. And they're very clear about their pet peeves, favorite words, and even a "rude word of the week". An especially great podcast was #24 on "silence" (Aug. 21, 2005). And their anniversary show on Feb. 17 described how they produced their show.
fr. Roderick has spun off his 20 minute Daily Breakfast from "The Catholic Insider" as part of his SQPN enterprise. Aside from his daily routine as a priest, he provides a great amount of information on how me makes his podcast. It\'s necessary to re-subscribe from the former "popecast" series.

@Podder Updates

Version 1.3 is available at the downloads page of apodder.org. It is now easier to remove feeds and old podcasts.Newly added are tags .
Tip #1: (Listen to the Tip) Download podcasts then head over to your browser for more information. After every download session, the show notes provided in the RSS feed by the podcast authors appear as an HTML page, automatically displayed in your default browser if you want. You can click on the mp3 files and listen in your browser plug-in. The lists of podcasts downloaded into your mp3 directory and all the podcasts recorded as downloaded can be browsed in order of time, titles, feeds, or tags. The advantage of this technique is that you can set up your browser with the fonts and colors the way you like to view web pages then read these "table of contents" for podcasts. Your browser search helps find podcasts, too.
Reminder: apodder.org is building a respository of podcasts that include information on eyesight or are made by visually impaired podcasters. Link at http://www.apodder.org/community with 400+ (over 15GB). We're expanding our list by using podcast search services from http://www.podnova.com and http://www.podzinger.com. Podzinger picks up fragments of podcasts that discuss vision-related topics, like text-to-speech or accessibility issues.

Episode 2: (June 21) Updates, Accessibility in PDF, and @Podder Features (MP3)

Podcasts about Vision

(Update) MDSupport.org co-hosted a virtual expo on "low vision" with presentations to be archived soon. A very useful presentation is "Learning to Live with Low Vision: A rehabilitation journey"
(Update) The opthalmology show "As Seen From Here" has moved to (surprise) http://www.asseenfromhere.com/ with a listing of 13 programs and a tutorial on subscribing using iPodder.
(New) Blindtech got a promo on Adam Curry's Daily Source Code (June 9, 2005). Blind podcaster Don Coco demonstrates screen readers and software for music synthesis and podcasting. This guy is having a blast using technology that utilizes his broadcasting background. Listen to a blind person listening to his computer to produce what you're listening to!

Podcasts and podcasters dealing with accessibility

Let's talk about accessibility in Adobe PDF and its use for eBooks. Following up from our 1st podcast, Prof. Susan Krieger's interview with Dr. Moira Gunn descried some problems using PDF for her new book "Things No Longer There". "Todd the Geek" from Geek News Central has a new book "Podcasting Do-it-yourself Guide" available as an eBook (same price as paperback on Amazon) from Wiley Publishing. Here's a recount of my experiences with buying the eBook and learning more about accessibility in Adobe Reader.

Naturally, you save shipping and download instantly the eBook (after paying for it, of course). You'll need either Microsoft Reader or Adobe Reader and (here's a catch) Microsoft Passport .net to unlock the downloaded file. So, you might need to download, install, and setup Passport and/or Adobe Reader. I needed to update for Adobe 7.0 and found myself also getting a Yahoo search bar and Adobe Photoshop trial gratuitously bundled in the setup. And Adobe Reader had to activate itself. Each step in this process leads to the next, eventually allowing you to read the eBook.

Adobe Reader has "Read out loud" buried down on its View menu. That works, if you can stand to listen to the voice of "Microsoft Sam" for 300 pages ("he" is *not* someone you'd like to be stuck in an elevator with). You can set preferences to use other voices installed on my PC (notably the more pleasant "American adult female Mary"). And it would be nice to have an upfront toolbar for starting and pausing reading aloud as alternatives to drilling down the View menu or learning the keyboard shortcuts.

But, wait there's more! At the bottom of the menubar Help, I found an accessibility setup option. That takes you through several accessibility options offering reading order and font choosing, and most important (for me) contrast with black background and yellow or blue or white fonts.

So, bottom line on this experiment: a few gotchas in eBook setup, some disappointment in reading out loud, but easier viewing with high contrast background. Adobe is indeed trying to make PDF more accessible. Some references: usability issues, accessibility features.

Now, what is @Podder?

@Podder is a podcatcher with the core features of managing subscriptions for feeds and downloads of podcasts, scheduled if the user likes. What's different from iPodder and doppler and other podcatchers is that the user interface of @Podder is more malleable so that it can be adapted for visually impaired users.

Visually impaired here means not only those who absolutely require screen readers as their main means of using a PC, like the BlindTech podcaster. @Podder should be helpful for the millions of people who need better fonts, color contrasts, screen arrangements, and perhaps some text-to-speech. We call this "easier viewing" to emphasize that @Podder is (a) simpler, with the core features "in your face" (so to speak) and (b) using general accessibility principles of applications.

Now, it turns out there aren't very good standards or guidelines for accessibility in either applications or web pages, so we're also trying to experiment with and demonstrate some new features of PC applications in general.

So, what's in @Podder (and in the screen shots and downloadable)?

Enlarged fonts, currently three "themes" including regular (like most applications), enlarged fonts, and contrast
Consistent interaction to delete or select feeds, downloads, or mp3 files by check boxes
Just a few Tabbed panes and buttons, not requiring menus or toolbars which get hard to read and manipulate
Big tooltips with descriptions
Text-to-speech by using a 3rd party tool (CoolSpeech) that speaks text copied to the clipboard (Sample in the podcast)
Keyboard shortcuts to all buttons (summarized in the Help)
Inline Help (refreshed from the website to be up-to-date)
Community web page to provide 1-click subscription of new materials

@Podder currently does not support screen readers until it's integrated with a Windows bridge to its Java language. We're still working on some usability issues but you'll probably find @Podder both functional as it is now , more comfortable to view, and with some interesting and helpful features.

You're welcome to download @Podder -- please send your reactions and suggestions to feedback@apodder.org.

Podcasts Not Related to Vision

Always good is Tony Kahn's Morning Stories from WGBH "stories that stay with you all day", I wonder how he finds these interesting story-tellers and great lessons in living, from June 17 "Arithmetic of Nursing".

Subscription instructions: On most web pages, look for symbols like these: podcast feed symbol

. Click Copy Link Location or Copy Shortcut in the right-mouse menu. Paste using the " Symbol used inside @Podder

>>>" button near the box in the upper left corner of the "Get PodCasts" tab of @Podder. Then click the "Add Feed" button. @Podder will check that the feed is valid and live and add the feed to the list below.

Episode 1:(June 12) Introduction, Podcast Recommendations

Resources for Visually Impaired Podcast Listeners

MD Support

has an audio description and loads of information on the family of eye problems related to macular degeneration. There's a mailing for ."macular degenerates" of all ages. Check out the original research article by MDSupport Director Dan Roberts on "Artificial Lighting and the Blue Light Hazard". New (June 19, "Learning to Live with Low Vision: A rehabilitation journey")

"As Seen From Here" Eye Science for the Professional

is a weekly (very) technical update on procedures available for treating eye diseases. Learn how medical researchers evaluate effectiveness of remedies. (Update, June 19, new site http://www.asseenfromhere.com/).

"On this week's (May 25, 2005) Tech Nation, Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Susan Krieger, a sociologist and writer who teaches in the Program in Feminist Studies at Stanford University. She explains how the loss of her eyesight as an adult has guided her to new inner dimensions. Susan is the author of "Things No Longer There - A memoir of Losing Sight and Finding Vision." Dr. Krieger's book publisher sets a great example by offering a digital version for reading from your computer.

Geeks and PodFathers do worry about podcasting for visually impaired.

Adam Curry's Daily Source Code (circa April 26, 2005). asked podcast tool producers to address needs of the visually impaired. Curry blends geek-speak and entertainment like a radio and VJ pro (which he is).
"The Geek" (Todd Cochrane)podcasting from Hawaii at Geek News Central, advises podcasters and bloggers to expand their audiences by being more inclusive of visually impaired readers and listeners. He sprinkles his podcasts with useful computing and software tips

WARNING: Curry uses words some may not like and The Geek may be more geeky than most can handle.

@Podder Favorites, unique and interesting podcasts (not restricted to vision)

Susan Smith Nash, the eLearning Queen, talks softly and authoritatively about techniques of distance learning, everything from military applications to Shakespeare.

Subscribe to Dr. Moira Gunn's NPR Technation's 3 weekly interviews podcast from ITConversations, a listener-supported podcast producer.

Who knows why, but this Los Angeles "stay at home dad", Dan Klass, an actor/comic, is addictive as "The Bitterest Pill".

Why is this podcast called "As Your World Changes"?

I entitled this podcast "As Your World Changes" first to capture the fun and excitement and openness we're enjoying about podcasting.

But "As Your World Changes" should also evoke the richness and appreciation that grows in our inner world as our eyesight changes our relationships with our external world -- the people, places, things, and activities that weave into new patterns for seeing and living.

Please send news and suggestions to community@apodder.org
Posted at http://www.apodder.org/community
Prepared by Susan L. Gerhart, January 19, 2006