The Canadian Council of the Blind Podcast

Communication is what your iPhone is all about. Several apps come installed on your iPhone to help you connect and exchange information with people in your life. In part one of our tour of these apps, we’ll focus on the Contacts, Phone and Messages apps. We’ll also touch on some additional related topics like emoji characters, stickers, Voice mail, and more.

In this 12 minute podcast, Russell Solowoniuk demonstrates using his LG washer model WM3500CW and his LG Dryer model DLE3500W using the accompanying accessible iOS or Android LG ThinQ app. He describes how a blind person can use the washer and dryer standalone and how accessibility is enhanced using the app on his iPhone. Note that models described have been discontinued and replaced with washer model WM3600HWA and dryer model DLE3600W as of March 2024.

In this session, we will explore the lifestyle apps discussed in the previous session in more detail. We’ll talk about managing recurring events in the calendar. The Notes app is full of features to keep your information organized. Suggestions are at the heart of apple’s new Journal app and we’ll go through how to access these. Apps in this category are simple on the surface, but often have surprisingly thorough capabilities.

Being so portable, your iPhone is an ideal device for helping with many aspects of everyday life. This session will discuss a number of apps designed to come in handy in everyday situations. These include Weather, Reminders, Calendar, Notes, Calculator and Journal. This group of apps is very suitable for use by beginners. Siri works well with all of them. Rather than an exhaustive exploration, this lecture will hopefully give you enough of an idea of the capabilities of these apps as well as how to control them in order to get started using them.

Wayne Antle reviews the features and how to use finder on the mac. finder is like file explorer for windows. It has many powerful features and uses.

Apple has long been associated with music and creativity. Your iPhone can give you access to millions of songs, curated playlists, radio stations, and even some live events. This month, we’ll dive into the enjoyment of music and go over the Music app and the Apple Music Plus service in detail. This is one of the easiest ways for beginners to start truly enjoying their iPhones.

Your iPhone is constantly checking for new information. Apps running in the background can interrupt you with notifications. So can calls and messages from people. Thankfully, Apple has provided tools to help deal with this effectively. We will discuss notifications settings in detail. These let you decide whether and how apps can inform you of things in normal circumstances. Meanwhile, focus settings let you determine what and who can interrupt you at a given time. Between these groups of settings, you can be in control of interruptions to your daily life from your iPhone.

The Voice Control feature allows people to control their iPhones entirely with spoken commands. Designed with sighted people in mind who have motion difficulties making use of the touchscreen difficult, the system can be used in conjunction with VoiceOver. This final lecture for 2023 will give a basic tour of how Voice Control works. This completes the many different ways there are of controlling your iPhone. In the new year, we’ll begin talking about the many different apps and services which can be used and accessed by blind people through the use of their iPhones.

Nolan Jenikov gives us a brief demonstration of the iPhone application perplexity.

shubh gives us a demonstration of the glasses. Following is a lengthy Q&A session. You can reach him at shubh@seleste.co the website is: https://www.seleste.co/product-page/seleste-smart-glasses

For many blind people, Braille is vital. They prefer to type in Braille and read in Braille rather than using a touchscreen and synthetic speech. This is quite possible using VoiceOver on your iPhone. Apple offers extensive support for using their products with Braille displays. This week, we’ll focus on what’s possible when you connect a Braille display via Bluetooth to your iPhone. We’ll also discuss Braille screen input which lets you type on the touchscreen as if it were a Braille keyboard. We’ll also go over some pitfalls of using Braille with your iPhone.

We store a lot of information on our iPhones. Apple does a lot to help keep that information secure. In this part of the Unseen Touchscreen course, we examine these security measures and the things we can do to safeguard our information while still making the most of our iPhones. The relevant section of the book is called Digitally Defending Yourself.

The topics for this session will include a brief tour of Siri. This digital assistant can be very helpful especially to beginners. We’ll discuss what Siri is designed to do and what it can’t do. Also, we’ll discuss how iOS handles sound. This is an area where iOS can present some challenges for blind people who aren’t aware of sound related decisions that Apple has made.

ScripTalk talking prescription labels help a variety of people who cannot get their prescription information in traditional ways. Talking prescriptions help people with vision impairment, they help people who are print impaired or have other neurological limitations. The challenge, as we focus our efforts on bringing ScripTalk into more Canadian pharmacies, is to get you to speak with your pharmacy manager and let them know that these labels will allow you to be able to stay safe and independent while taking your medications. for more information on ScripTalk visit the website: https://www.envisionamerica.com/

The Centre for Equitable Library Access (CELA) has recently introduced a new option to its talking book player line up. This is the Envoy connect player available for purchase through the CNIB smart life store. In this presentation about CELA’s new service supporting the Envoy Connect audio book player, we will cover the basics of the Envoy Connect player, basics of the associated CELA Connect software, and what the service launch involves.

In part two of our tour of settings, we review the mental mapping of the settings discussed in part one. We then continue our journey through the settings exploring the security, Apple, and third party apps areas. Combined with what has been covered in prior cessions, this should leave everyone in good shape to enjoy and continue to master their iPhones over the Summer break. In the Fall, we’ll proceed to discussions of security, using Braille displays with your iPhone, and much more. If people wish, they can email questions to me over the Summer months. I’ll be happy to help if I can.

The settings app is what you use to configure your iPhone so it best suits your needs. You can do everything from choosing how bright your display is to adjusting security options and enabling accessibility features. There are hundreds of settings inside various branches of options. This cession will be the first of a two part exploration of what settings are available. The focus will be on overall orientation to the Settings app plus deeper dives into some of the branches of options.

In this lecture, we’ll continue our tour of various aspects of the iOS operating system. Topics will include the powerful spotlight search feature, the app library and home screens, how to organize and move apps on your iPhone, how files are stored, when to use the iPhone storage settings area, the files app, the philosophy behind iOS, and current developments.