All Cool Blind Tech Shows

In this podcast, Justin takes us through all the basics of seeing your iPhone's signal strength in DBM, or decibel-milliwatts. Though this may extremely complicated, Justin reveals that it is actually very simple and demonstrates how to change your signal strength to DBM, then how to take it back to the default settings.

Welcome to the Reaper on Windows series. In this series, Alex will show you how to start using Reaper for your audio needs. Reaper is a full-featured digital audio workstation (DAW) with tons of capability for a reasonable price tag.

In this episode, Alex demonstrates installing the unofficial OSARA keymap and explains some features of OSARA and Reaper. At the end we make silly noises with effects. This is intended as a general overview and why Alex enjoys REAPER so much. We'll get into specific topics later.

In future episodes, we'll explore recording, in-depth effects usage, actually getting things done. Suggestions are welcome. If Alex has the know-how, it'll most likely make it into this series.

OSARA is an open-source Reaper extension that allows screen reader users to enjoy Reaper more fully by exposing inaccessible features of Reaper and making controls speak better and more accurately.

The Reaper homepage

OSARA Homepage

ESight enables people with legal blindness to actually see.

Want to try eSight? Get in touch with their team by calling : 1 855 837 4448

You can fill out the Try eSight form here.

You can support CBT, by picking up your free audiobook here.

In this podcast, Justin takes us through the custom vibrations on iOS. He shows us how to assign vibrations to specific contacts, the default ones that iOS comes with and how to create new custom vibrations.

ESight enables people with legal blindness to actually see.

Want to try eSight? Get in touch with their team by calling : 1 855 837 4448

You can fill out the Try eSight form here.

If you have always wanted to try out an operating system but you don’t want to risk losing your files, one good solution is to install it on a virtual machine. A virtual machine allows you to install an OS in an isolated environment, so even if anything goes wrong, your primary OS is still intact. It also lets you experiment without forcing you to part with your current OS. In this podcast, Leo walks you through installing Windows 10 on VMware Player, a free software which allows you to install an operating system on a virtual machine. If you don’t have a copy of windows 10, the best way to obtain an iso image is through the media creation tool. To help with the initial install, the talking Windows PE iso is also used. Only the initial install of windows 10 is covered, so if you’re stuck at the welcome screen, this podcast will show you how to complete the installation. Enjoy!

No doubt the word phablet has entered every day vocabulary among the general population. The larger screen allows not only for more precise on-screen navigation, but also provides an opportunity for more content and video to be viewed.

On some phablets, such as Samsung's Galaxy Note 5, a stylus is included which can detect not only precise finger movement, but also pressure in the form of greater line thickness. For professionals, artists, and general consumers alike, this provides the ability to write with handwritten notes or drawings. A picture's worth a thousand words, or so they say.

What about other stylus advantages? Samsung has built a special "hover" gesture, which allows swiping and various screen actions without touching the physical phone. This is similar but very, very different from Apple's 3D touch. The reason we make this comparison is simple: Some air gestures can preview content or interact with it in contextual ways. However, it is worth "noting" that 3D touch requires a firm press on the screen, while this is the opposite, whereby you lift the stylus half an inch above it.

What about accessibility? Lucky for us, Samsung has built in Talkback support for the stylus. While not ideal, it allows you to swipe around the keyboard, tap items or keys, and see a more "3D" overview of the screen. With a physical stylus, your entire wrist and hand are involved in the touch exploration process. Drawing might also be useful for those who have some vision, as you can create large-print notes for yourself. Join as the question is explored: Is the Note 5's stylus capability worth it for the visually impaired?

In this podcast, we show how you can increase your VoiceOver TTS above the standard 100% on a Mac. This was recorded using OSX Mavericks, but still works great in El Capitan and Yosemite.

If text is more your thing, the same instructions may be found here:

* First, get everything in VO set up the way you want. Then, go into VO utility, and Command-shift-e to export your settings. Export all of them, and save the .voprefs somewhere you'll remember.

* Open this .voprefs in textEdit by pressing Option-Control-Shift-m, and navigate to Open With > Other... Choose textEdit from the open dialog, and press Return. The .voprefs will open in readable text you can edit.

* Search for rate by pressing Command-f, and typing rate and pressing Return. Hit escape so you're back in the window and see where you are.

* There's a line that says "100" below that huge key with "rate" in it. Find the "100,” or whatever your TTS rate is, and change it to something else. You can also do this with volume (some legacy voices like Fred need this to be as loud as the rest of your system).

Note: If you have multiple activities that use different voices and rates, be sure to edit the right one. Do this by searching for the voice name and finding the corresponding rate.

Once that's completed, Command-s to save, open VO Utility again and import your settings, or just press return on the .voprefs file.

Caution: If you get into trouble with increasing the speech rate too fast, you can press Command -Option-Control-down arrow.

In this podcast, Justin goes over the Speedtest.net app for iOS. He explains what it is used for, how it is useful in real world applications, and demonstrates how to proficiently navigate the application.

In this podcast, Alex takes us on a brief tour of the recently released Mozilla Firefox for iOS. There are some bugs and issues, but overall it's a smooth browsing experience.

See Marco Zehe's post for more information.

This week on Spotlight the Cool Blind Tech Team features Claria Zoom.

Claria Zoom is an all-in-one application helping elderly & people suffering from eye diseases (AMD, glaucoma…) stay active and independent.

Download it now

Claria Zoom won the Golden Silmo award at the 2014 World Optics Fair in Paris.

Unrivalled reading & writing comfort

Extra large characters

Contrasted color themes

Big keyboards

Speech activation available on any screen

Interface Claria Zoom

FeaturesGrey copie

20+ redesigned functionalities

Communication: Phone, Text messages, Emails

Daily tools: GPS, Calendar, Clock, Calculator, Voice memos, Notes, Weather, File explorer

Entertainment: Music player, Newspapers, Radio player, Audio book reader, Web browser

Camera: Take a photo/video, Electronic magnifier, Optical character recognition (OCR)

With the recent release of KNFB Reader for Android, we can now see how text recognition and accuracy can differ among various smartphones. Does iOS still have an edge over recognition quality? What are some of the shortcomings of the Android app? Taking the same document, we run it through the camera of a Galaxy Note 5 and an iPhone 6s, which offer the 2015-era top notch camera quality from both Apple and Samsung.

You can grab the Android version of KNFB Reader here

Or grab the iOS one from the iTunes Store here.