AI Generated Transcript
Good morning, everyone. This is Jeff Bishop, president of Blind Information Technology Solutions and welcome to Ask Bits, where we’re going to answer lots of your questions and have a lot of fun today. There’s a lot going on and if you are not on our announced list, we’ll give you information on that, how you can learn more about us in public spaces. And if you are not a member yet, we encourage you to join us over@joinbits.org well, let me introduce our panel today. So let’s start. Let’s see, we have Liz. Good morning, Liz, how are you? Good morning. I’m doing fine. Oh, good. So good to hear your voice. And David, welcome. Hey, thank you. You’re welcome. And let’s see, we have our group of people who are sort of managing the fort for us and managing all things to make sure we’re all communicating together. DARC is our streamer and Mac extraordinaire Mike is our host. I know, Mike. Hi, Liz. Jeff, hello. Yes, Mike. Regardless of when this is being listened to, the date of Today is Saturday, May 16, 2026. So the question for today, the icebreaker question of the day, is, you know, we in BITS have fostered a community and culture of learning and mentorship. And what we would like to know from you today is how do you best learn? This is information that we’ll be able to use later in making sure that we’re meeting you where you are. So if you’d like to answer that today, that would be great. So as usual, we’ll start with those that are helping us today and see if they want to answer the question. And then we’re going to open it up for questions to get started. We already have people in the queue and then we’ll hear from Marcy at half past the hour to let everybody know what’s new, what’s happening around the world of, of BITS and just the things in general. David, I would say my best learning is obviously, I could say listening is the preferred reading, but, but effectively doing so an interactive project for me is the best way to do it. Love it. Love it. Okay, Liz, My best way of learning is visually. I am a very visual learner. I need hands on. Just give me the thing that I’m supposed to learn and I’ll figure out how it works. Now, when you say visual, you don’t mean a visual from the standpoint of seeing something because did you have vision before? Not in that sense, no. But I am do and very much do consider myself a visual learner. Okay. No, that’s interesting. I, I don’t know that I’ve ever considered myself a visual learner, but I have the same sort of mindset as you in that if I don’t do it, if I don’t interact, I’m not going to learn it. And so I don’t know if, I don’t know if I would call that myself visual learner. I don’t know. I don’t know what that. And it also to me depends on the task. But mainly I am a visual learner. Yeah, I love that. Read things as a last resort. Yeah. I want to know if something is genuinely able to be figured out just as itself before I go to reading about it. Okay, well, let’s get started. Mike, who do we have up first? Up first is area code 256, followed by Janet. All right, 256. Who are you? It’s Jessica. Hello, Jessica. So I, hello. I learned, I suppose by, well, of course a braille. And then of course I’ve got Windows and iOS and, and then I love to ask people questions too and things and, and do research and things online. I would say that the modern technologies in Braille has definitely made things a lot easier than what it used to be. I mean, back when I was a kid, you know, if I wanted to learn something, I might have to go to the library and they might or might not have a book. Do you have a question for us today? Yeah. So my question is, do you know if things like multi line graphics braille displays, do you know if they would work well with like reading sign language books and things like, you know, with books. Interesting. And if there’s any way I can get one of these multi line graphics braille displays. Okay, did anyone on the panel want to answer that question? I will attempt it. Things like the Monarch and Graffiti are, are pretty expensive devices these days. If you can get the material in a format that can be read graphically, then yes, I believe at least that the graffiti probably can do it. And I think the Monarch could, could probably do it as well. Although I think that may require a little more work to get, get the doc the image prepared. But not sure as far as the, as far as getting one of these, I, I, I, I think right now these are mainly, and someone can correct me if I’m wrong, these are mainly meant for things like school districts and, and, and people who can ultimately afford them. They’re, they’re rather expensive. I think that the Monarch is what, between 15 and $20,000 for that device and the Graffiti. I’m not sure what its current price point is. And there’s also the dot pad, which does have some graphic capabilities and is quite a bit cheaper. So that might be an option. And actually they’re a partner with ACB and offer a discount. At least they were, but I’m not sure if that’s still enforced or not. So that might be an option for you too. But I think ultimately, yes, I think that you could use these devices for that, obtaining one. Unless you can get a grant or voc rehab or someone like that to assist you, I’m not. I’m not sure that you have many other options. Okay, thank you, Jessica. Janet. And who’s next after Janet? Pam. Okay, perfect. Hello everybody. Good job on your demonstration on Flow on Accessible World. Oh, thanks. Podcast. And I love the song you came up with. It’s fun, right? Yeah, it was fun. Anyway, that’s my comment for the day. But to answer the question I learned by somebody, hand me your Android phone and tell me how to do it. So I have hands on experience on how to do it instead of me trying to do it on my own. And a lot of podcasts or YouTube videos help. But I did have a question I might have to write to ask Bits for this for the answer though, okay. Is I have an older Android device, so will that still work for the classes coming up in June? Because they said Android 10. I have an older Android. Yeah, I would ask that you write to ask Bits. So ask it bits-acb.org yeah, I would like to ask Bits. Pam, good morning. How I learn things, I use a combination of approaches and it sort of depends on the. The project. Just to give you an example, the way I learned how to use my iPhone, and this is even before I purchased my first iPhone. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. So I purchased a book that was from National Braille Press. The book was in Braille and I read and studied that book. But I can usually learn quite well from, you know, reading a book and then applying what I read to the actual device so that when I got my iPhone, I was able to start using it. I wasn’t fast or anything, but I started using it. And of course, you know, obviously having the hands on once, once you’ve read the material definitely helps. And then even if I don’t have the material in front of me to read, just getting the hands on and maybe getting a little bit of guidance, like a YouTube video that hopefully has audio with it, you know, that helps. I’m I’m usually not one of these people and I know there are those out there and I get it. There are people that really have to be spoon fed. It’s strictly hands on and it’s take their hands and put their fingers where they need to go and that sort of thing. And I use a combination of approaches and I’m sure there are some instances where I too would have to be spoon fed. There you go. Do you have a question for us today? Not right off the bat. I don’t have a question. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate that very much. Who’s next? Malcolm and okay, Malcolm. My way of learning is hands on. You can give me the device and tell me how to what I need to do, but let me touch it and feel it so that I know what I’m doing. There you go. Love it. You have a question for us today? I do. I have an iPad and I’m using it to in my calendar. I put in the appointments for the like this meeting here on Saturday. I went in this morning into my calendar and I tapped on the notation in my calendar. The time 8 o’, clock, tapped on it to open it up to be able to go to Zoom to connect to the call. When I do it on my phone, all I have to do is go to the date, tap the ibits, Ask Ibits, it opens up and there’s a join button. I hit that and it connects right up to teams on my phone. I went to do that this morning on my iPad, opened it up, tapped ibits, Ask Ibits and it didn’t open up anything where I could connect to it automatically. Is there something I’m doing wrong, Liz or David? That should be how it works on the iPad because they’re both basically the same interface. But it’s not. No, they’re not exactly. Liz, do you want to follow up with anything further? I was just going to say that I would check, I would go into the event and go into edit and make sure that it has the Zoom information in there already because it may not for whatever reason have had that in there. And so if it doesn’t, it doesn’t know where to go. So that, that would be the first thing that I would check. Well, follow up to that is the weird thing about it is when I go into my iPad for that date and that time there’s two ask bits appointments on there. Both of them say Zoom. So when I tap on it, it doesn’t open it up. Right. So Liz is correct. The other thing, remember that when you’re working on the iPad, that you’re going to get a slightly different user experience than, say, on the phone because of the larger screen size, it will present information to you in a split view. So you may have to look at the events on the right side of the tablet versus having it all on one screen. Which iPad do you have? I don’t remember. Now, we would suggest that you simply look at the event like Liz suggested, edit the event, and look and see if that information is in the event. My guess is that when the event was added, it’s possible that. That you did not add the zoom link for it specifically. That would be our advice to you without looking at your specific, you know, iPad. It’s kind of hard for us to judge that from here, so I would just say the zoom link needs to be in the location field, the URL field, or the notes field. Okay, Mike. All right. Up next is Cliff, followed by area code 734. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Cliff. Hey, Liz. Mike, I can’t forget about my Mac brother Darcy either, because he does a great job because he used the best glass in the world. But, yeah, the directions, I’m not reading them. I’m just gonna try to put it together like a puzzle and to follow up with the person who was talking about the calendar. The key to that is on the iPhone and the iPad, is to make sure that the zoom in the location. If you put it in the location, it would automatically detect that as a video. You’re breaking up. I. I would also recommend if. If people have not. And I know that it’s sort of a little bit different than what this caller Malcolm, was asking for. But if you have not played with the Outlook app and used it to handle calendaring, I find that to be a much more intuitive interface than the actual iOS calendar app. I just find it a lot more intuitive and a lot easier to utilize for me. Area code 734. Is that right, Mike? Yes. This is Allison from Michigan. Okay. How I learn best is I like to be handed a device. Like, let’s say that I got a BT Speak or whatever, and then somebody will hand me the device and say, this is the new BT Speak. It’s a lot like your Braille and Speak. You have the Perkins style keyboard. I like to be given a device and then a description of where the keys are in each device and how to perform keystrokes step by step on a certain device. And I also like to go online and look at the instruction manuals for devices, too. And they’re also pretty helpful. My question is, what exactly is the Monarch? I know it’s a multi line braille display. Is it like a note taker? I. I just recently read an article about it. Is that okay, The Monarch is a multi line braille display, but it does both tactile graphics and braille on the same in the same area of the display. So you can read books and maybe the book has a tactile graphic in it. You don’t have to go. If the book is formatted in such a way that both appear in the same file, you will be able to see the graphic and the text in braille on the same device without having to navigate to a different app. I believe I actually have never tried it with a book that has both in the same file. But I do know for a fact that you can open up tactile graphics. And if there is braille on the graphic, let’s say a tactile map for example, of the states, and it has braille labels on the states, it will show not only the tactile graphic of the map, but it will also show the braille labels for each of the states as they’re coded on the map. So that, so that, that’s my very high level explanation of the Monarch. Yay. All right. And if you would like actual dimensions in terms of line. Not dimensions, but lines and cells, write to askits-acb.org and I can provide that to you. So we got Jane next. Go ahead, Jane. I. I just looked it up. The. There’s 320 cells on the monarch and 10 lines. I thought it was larger than that. No. Thank you, Jane. Perfect. Okay. Thank you, Jane. That’s all the hands for now. All right, let’s see. I know it’s a bit early, Marcy, but do you want to talk about what’s new? Absolutely. So we have a couple of new presentations. We have verification. We have the verification in the. In the May updates of Fusion, JAWS and ZoomText. And that’s going to be on Wednesday, May 20th at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific. If I could talk, life would be great. Where in the BITS Zoom room changes are coming to JAWS, ZoomText Infusion products. Join BITS as we welcome Vispero’s Elizabeth Whitaker so she can help us understand what these changes are all about and how they affect the use of our Vispero products. The next thing we have is Apple Bites with Herbie Allen. When? On May 27th at 8:00pm Eastern, 5:00pm Pacific. Wow. Where in the BITS presentation Zoom Room Join BITS and Herbie Allen as we take a bite out of the bits Apple and Explore iOS devices, apps and accessories. In June, we have an introduction to NVDA 2026 when on Wednesday, June 10th at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific, where the bits zoom room. So welcome, welcome. BITS welcomes Quinten Christensen from NV Access for an informative update on all the new features in the released NVDA 2026. Now with education, we have level up your Android skills and that begins on June 1st for four weeks. And will Walsh is going to help us get all the new Android Access skills that we want to learn. So again, that’s the first, the Mondays in June, on the 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd. And then we have, starting on Thursday, June 4th, Marvin Humpkin is going to teach us how to use the Blind Shell phone. And that’s going to come work for three weeks. That’s going to be exciting as we learn all the features about the Blind shell. So those are the things that are coming up in bits. And I invite all of you to join BITS and check out the new education courses, the new presentations that we have available for you. I also want to invite everybody to BITS Chat so that you can get to know us. And if there’s any technology needs that you have, we’re happy to address those as well. We’re happy to break out into breakout rooms and help you work with your technology because IT bits, as Jeff says, we want to meet you where you are, so we want to help you do what you need to get done with Access technology. Absolutely. All right, let’s see. Do we have any more hands yet? We are going to go to William. Good morning, everyone. So I wanted to answer the question of the day. So how I best learn is one on one. So someone is going with me, you know, teaching me step by step. That’s how I best learn. But I’m getting hopefully better with my iPhone, but that’s how I best learn. Thank you. Okay, Mike, any hands yet? We do have a hand, Nora. Yeah, hi. Certain things best learn on one on one. I used to learn very, very well in the group gagging, but now when it comes to technical things, sometimes I best learn one on one. Okay, perfect. Okay, thank you. Thank you. All right, so I want to. I just want to put the call out for anybody that hasn’t spoken to raise your hand. We have people’s hands up that have kind of spoken a couple of times already. Times. Yeah, yeah. So we’re looking for new hands. We Got Stacy. Hello, Stacy. Okay, first of all, I want to send with her Tandem with a certain person, and I’m wondering how we can get that resolved because she’s having no problems with the other Tandem users, but she’s having problem with one Tandem user. I think, I think, Stacy, I think the best thing to do here, we would need a lot more context on this problem. So I think, I think if you want to write to askits-acb.org we will. We will see how we can assist you. There are some specific stipulations there, depending on who the controller is. You need to make sure that they’re on a version that supports the user and all of those things. There’s specific requirements there. But if you’ll write to askits-acb.org, we will lend you a hand with that. Is that okay? Yeah. Okay, Perfect. Michael. Michael. Good morning, everyone. Hey. I wanted to come answer your question. I learned best by teaching. Recently I did a comprehensive teams and SharePoint course, and I have learned more about Microsoft Teams and managing files and SharePoint through Teams by teaching a group how to. How to do this. And so I think my best way of learning is if I’m giving a given a task to teach someone else. And stay tuned to your community schedule for upcoming course or not course, but overview of Microsoft Teams and SharePoint in June. So that’s my answer. That’s my answer. That’s the way I learned best. I learned best by teaching it to somebody else. Yes, because I can teach it. I know that. I know it. Absolutely. Learn the little things to be able to manage. Because when you put yourself in a different person’s mindset, you’re like, how would I. At least this is how my brain works. How would I do this? If I get stuck in this window or I go to this tab, what do I do? Sometimes there are different versions of the thing that you’re trying to teach in terms of software. Let’s don’t talk about that. Liz. Yeah, we don’t want to talk about that for the other person, but it’s because they have a different version. And so you learn new things by teaching them. Shannon, you can unmute. And then up next will be Larry. Okay. Shannon, good morning. Hi. This is more a, I guess, procedural question. I hear a lot of talk about people on bits like being able to remote into other people’s computers, computers and help them, you know, to fix certain things. And I’m just curious what kind of security or just, I don’t know, Assurance do people get that things aren’t going, you know, like a lot of people have sensitive information on their computers and often, you know, you need to be cautious about who is remoting into your computer. So are there things that people are told when a BITS member, another BITS member is going to be remoting into their computer or how does that work? Sure, I’ll start and then I’m happy to have anybody else chime in here. But first of all, not all BITS members have this capability. They are highly selected and screened and interviewed and we talk a lot about privacy and ensuring that, you know, things that are done on device are confidential. There’s, there’s only truly a handful of people that have this level of, of access for exactly that reason because we don’t want just, you know, Joe Schmo trying to be careful on naming here, you know, to be able to, to, to do this because we don’t know who, who is doing that. Right. So you need to have some level of, of competence that the person that’s working with you is, is a professional. They’re going to treat your information with the highest of confidence and honestly with the people that, that we have selected. And it’s mainly come from our IT team. So people like Kayla and Larry and me and David and Marcy and, and others who, who you know, have been given this privilege to be able to assist others. Again, we don’t give that, that capability out to everyone. That’s not that that would defeat the purpose of, of handling things in a secure and safe way because we, we are a strong believer of security within the organization and privacy and as long as I’m president, that’s going to remain that way. So. Awesome. Okay, thank you so much. Oh, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Do we have more hands? Yes, I just gave Larry permission to unmute. That’s right, yeah. Okay. Larry, the person was asking about security. Know that all members have access to 30 minutes of REM and if they’re not a member of our IT team, you need to really scrutinize who you’re letting into your machine for whether they use RIM or if they use Quick Assist or whatever. If they’re from the IT team, they’re going to let you know. And what we do is avoid any of your document files. It is usually an issue having to do with how do you log in with your Outlook files or get into certain specific Windows oriented items. And so you should scrutinize who that person is that’s coming in or that you’re allowing in if you let another member that is not a member of the IT team or the ASCAT BITS team, you need to be very, very cautious about who that is you’re letting into your system. I will, I will tell you that even the Disability Answer Desk Team team is not fallible. Okay. Even that team has been known to. I guess the best way to say this is. And I published an article about this very subject and it got pretty well distributed about being aware of what you’re doing when you’re dealing with vendors and that includes Microsoft and the Disability Answer Desk that, you know, be cognizant of whomever is on your machine. They have ultimate power at that point if you’ve granted it. And so therefore, you know, be, be diligent and, and ask lots of questions and demand answers. And if, and if, and you know, if you’re not getting the answer, it’s time to disconnect. You know, if you’re not satisfied with the, the way things are going, it’s ultimately up to you to remain safe. So you need to make sure that you are practicing the best safe computing skills that you possibly can. And we cannot reiterate that more than we have any other hands. No, I think you were gonna talk. You probably would have heard about. Glo can be found at glow bits-acb.org a number of us in bits, as well as in other parts of ACB in the organization and my work professionally at the University of Arizona are working on some presentations which we actually hope to bring to the community. We are going to be taking the GLOW application on the road and we’re going to be talking about it in a professional conference setting. And as a part of that we have developed what we are calling the GLOW Lab Hub. And it’s going to continue to evolve over time. But basically this is going to be a, a way for us to be able to teach accessibility principles in a more either single user based experience or in a group setting and allow you to work through specific exercises, learn specific terminology, learn about GLOW abilities and concepts and capabilities and we’re really, really, really excited about that. And so if you have not taken a look at glow, I would highly encourage it. There’s lots of activity happening in the GLOW space and a lot of that will feed directly into Bits Whisperer as well, which is going to be coming out later this summer. And so we’re truly excited about it. I think what we’re going to do is we’re going to pass the ball around and let our panel wish everyone a farewell and bring up any last minute comments, and then we’ll call it a day because I think we’re close to time here. David, I just want to say thank you for joining us. And we’ll hopefully see you at chat every Friday and Saturday evening, including tonight. Love it. Liz, thank everyone for being here. If you have questions, feel free to reach out to askits-acb.org Excellent. Thank you so much. And Marcy, thank you for leading us and helping us in being the person that you are. And Mike and Darcy, thank you for doing what you’re doing here today for streaming as well as hosting. And we’ll be back in a couple of weeks with another edition of Ask bits. Have a great weekend, everybody. And we’ll see you later today, potentially at another BITS event near you.