Vispero Connect

FSCast 163, New Hosts John and Larry Gassman Introduce themselves, Eric Damery discusses December Updates of JAWS, ZoomText, and Fusion 2019 releases plus home annual subscription licensing, and The Gassmans chat with Curtis Chong, long time user of Freedom Scientific Access Technology and one of the true innovator and Accessible Technology pioneers.

Hal Knight has one of the most familiar voices to people calling the U.S. Freedom Scientific sales department. Most people don't know that before joining Freedom in 2000, he spent 25 years+ on WPOR as one of Maine's most popular country music DJs. Hal is also a great storyteller as you'll hear in his conversation with Glen Gordon.

Rob Santello created the Hampod to make ham radio equipment more accessible. What he thought would be a one-off device has turned out to become a project that's helped numerous visually impaired ham operators around the world. He talks about how video magnifiers have allowed him to continue creating these devices long past the time he thought his declining vision would allow.

Plus, information about who will be hosting FSCast in December, status of SMA shipments in the US, and plans for December product updates.

The October edition of FSOpenLine, Freedom Scientific's global call-in show, keeps you informed of new developments and answers listener questions from around the world.

Public beta 2 of JAWS 2019 is just around the corner. Eric Damery and Jonathan Mosen discuss and demonstrate the new features.

Soon, there'll be a new option for licensing JAWS and ZoomText if you're a home user in the United States. Jonathan demonstrates the new portal for Home Annual licenses as it nears completion.

And after producing 160 episodes of this podcast, Jonathan Mosen says goodbye, reflecting on his time behind the FSCast microphone and wishing FSCast every success in future episodes.

The September edition of FSOpenLine, Freedom Scientific's global call-in show, keeps you informed of new developments and answers listener questions from around the world.

The next major release of our screen reading software, JAWS 2019, is about to enter public beta as this podcast is published. Eric Damery takes us through some of the new features available immediately, and those planned for the JAWS 2019 cycle.

Jonathan Mosen speaks with Stuart Lawler, who has a new role with Sight and Sound as it expands to Ireland.

This episode of FSCast contains a recording of the first FSOpenLine session.

If you are listening in a podcast app that supports chapter marks, each question and section is its own chapter, making it easy to skim through to the topics that interest you.

Topics covered in the August FSOpenLine include, the move to our new building, some of the new features in JAWS 2019, the accessibility of webinar software, requested Braille improvements, future FS webinars, JAWS with Microsoft Edge, the next version of Windows 10, JAWS 2019 beta's impact on JAWS 2018 users, the talking mouse feature in JAWS, ElBraille, Jaws+Windows+F4, copying text to the clipboard with Google Chrome, JAWS and PowerPoint, making JAWS available to more people, JAWS on ARM processors, the future of FSReader, and JAWS on the log-in screen.

Check our blog and social media feeds as we'll soon be advising the date and time of our next FSOpenLine.

We're launching a new global call-in show called FSOpenLine, and we're looking forward to your participation. Learn all about it at the start of this episode.

Jonathan Mosen then demonstrates the support for Microsoft's Skype 8 released in the August update for JAWS 2018, and explains how to make sure you have the correct version.

We meet Kenia Flores, recipient of our scholarship at this year's National Federation of the Blind's national convention.

And in keeping with our theme of meeting the next generation of leaders, in 2009, we met Cricket Bidleman, who was 10 at the time. We check in with her all these years later to find she's now at Stanford.

After news about the latest software releases and some listener comments, Jonathan Mosen speaks with Isaac Lidsky. You may have heard Isaac's Ted Talk already, heard him speak recently at the NFB national convention, or read his book, Eyes Wide Open".

Isaac has been an actor, the editor of the Harvard Law Review, and a Supreme Court clerk among other things. He's an entrepreneur, public speaker, and father of four, three of them triplets. We're also very proud to say he's a JAWS user.

Hear Isaac's remarkable story, his life philosophy, and how JAWS has assisted him to achieve is potential.

There are huge savings to be made when you purchase our products at the NFB and ACB national conventions, and through Sight and Sound as part of their summer special. Learn about what's on offer, as well as exhibits and presentations.

We've released the much-anticipated firmware upgrade to our Focus Blue 5th generation Braille displays, and they now offer scratchpad and book reading functionality. Jonathan Mosen demonstrates where to find the update, how to install it, and what it does.

After reviewing the instructions, download the firmware and help file here.

The demonstration mentions two software packages to help you convert documents to contracted Braille for reading in the book reader.

Download Send to Braille from APH.

Download Biblos accessible word processor with multilingual Braille support.

Jonathan then speaks with Rachel Elias and Kostas Karachristos from Nuance about the current state of text-to-speech engines, optical character recognition, and speech recognition.

Rachel refers to an article about Nuance's involvement with the voice of Stephen Hawking. You can read that article here.