After a four-year hiatus, we’re delighted to welcome you back to the Words Words Words podcast. Along with a couple of featured words from Douglas Adams' wonderful book "The meaning of Liff", this episode includes a listener-contributed word, Battersea Park. Thanks Sally for sending it through. If you have any ideas to contribute, please get in touch. 

Battersea Park (verb) - The act of assaulting a poorly parked car, by a blind person with their white cane. Whilst neither recommended nor encouraged, this can relieve ones frustration when suddenly coming across a car which has been left casually across a path, or somewhere else it should not have been.

You can find earlier episodes in this series here.

In this episode of Audio Pizza, Shaun, Garth, and Kayaker try on the future—AI-powered smart glasses that promise to help us blind folk find our way without walking into quite so many lamp posts.  After that, they swap specs for security, digging into the iOS settings that can keep your iPhone safer than a squirrel guarding its last nut. And remember: if you must steal an iPhone… Shaun’s is apparently the one to go for.

Fun and games? Not exactly. In this edition of Audio Pizza, Shaun, Garth, and Kayaker try to talk about what they do for fun and games… only to reveal they’re not all that fun and don’t actually play that many games. But what they lack in actual gameplay, they make up for with quick banter, questionable opinions, and spirited chats about entertainment, video games, blind sports, and the occasional board game.

The elite Audio Pizza team digs deep into close to 100 sessions from Apple's World Wide Developer Conference, but they were unavailable, so Shaun, Garth and Kayaker fill in at the last minute.

The crew also digs into a host's question about the best accessible network attached storage options for your home.  Best of all, you'll not want to miss the intro spoof, ok you might want to miss it, but give it a listen anyway.

We won't bury the lead, Garth is back! Yes, he's tired, but what else is new? Well, Garth, Shaun and Kayaker will tell you all about Global Accessibility Awareness Day and the key take aways from Apple. And, we respond to a listener's question regarding what we do when we get our new phones. 

Shaun and Kayaker have a candid talk with Sally, a Person Centered Counselor, who holds a Masters in Counseling about mental health with blindness and vision loss. The threesome shares some personal stories with a bit of humor and how they try to cope with blindness each day, and sometimes fail.   

Links for your reference: American Council of the Blind, ACB  ACB Peer Support and mentoring  National Federation of the Blind, NFB  Foundation for Fighting Blindness Mental Health Resource Center  Wellbeing Services at Guide Dogs Victoria our-services/wellbeing-services 

Kayaker, Shaun, Garth and Kayaker talk about the latest Apple product announcements including the new MacBook Air M4. Listener feedback offers additional AI tips using your own special files. But the biggest news is our very own Shaun travelled to the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference and offers his insights about what he found on the exhibit hall floor including his latest impressions with the Glide.

Kayaker, Garth, and Shaun crush Kayaker’s opinion on the need for free blind utility apps, but everyone seems to be against the subscription model. And the gang discusses the latest AI news and how it might help the blind AI app world.

Shaun, Garth, and Kayaker are back discussing news from the Consumer Electronics Show - everything from Barbie robots, shocking spoons to AI supercomputers . You’ll learn who was on the nice and naughty list over the holidays and hear the predictions for 2025 (aka things that, if predicted, are guaranteed not to happen). Oh, and you’ll learn more than you ever wanted about aftershave.