Blind Abilities

Join Nick as he talks with Nicci Mariconi, a professor at the University of Phoenix. Nicci was visually impaired when she took her college classes on campus in Illinois and applied to the University of Phoenix and landed her dream job. Nicci lost the rest of her remaining sight and continues today to teach and fulfill her goal of teaching American history. We hope you enjoy and thanks for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Pete and Jeff talk to Michael Schwartz about passions, regaining the skills and confidence to keep the passion alive and making the blindness issue just an inconvenience. The Wandering Film Maker, the Visual Story Teller and the creator of The Palette Project is Michael Schwartz. Michael is visually impaired and continues to follow his calling as a Visual Story Teller. After losing most of his sight, Michael has continued as the Wandering film Maker using a Palette of colors to map his documentary on Blindness. From the red center of Australia, to the yellow sands of the deserts and the blue ocean New Zealand sailing, Michael’s TrailHead Productions team is putting it all together. And you can check out their progress on his YouTube Channel. You can also support The Palette project and receive exclusive footage on his Patreon page Be sure to subscribe and stay up to date with the Palette project and the Wandering Film Maker. You will also be part of the growing community contributing to the dialog. You can follow Michael on Twitter @OkNowMikeTweets Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Blind Abilities presents this iAccess Demo focussing on blocking those unwanted callers from ever calling you again. Pete reviews the process he used to block a number from which he received a computerized solicitation call on his iPhone. Check out this simple and quick process. k process. Thank you for listening . You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Kayla Weathers was the first totally Blind person to graduate from Dalton State Collegeand she is now looking forward to her Masters Degree and the challenges ahead of her. Her road to Dalton State was not actually a direct shot. Kayla had to make some decisions along the way to enhance her opportunities to succeed. Transitioning from High School to College is not always a smooth road and sometimes that road takes you out of your comfort zone and across the states. Kayla went to BLIND, Inc. a training center located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Not quite the same climate as Georgia has to offer. Kayla talks extensively about how her blindness training proved her opportunities to achieve her educational goals and how she gained the skills and confidence to do just about anything she set her mind to do. Join Kayla Weathers and Jeff Thompson in this very informative podcast about transitioning from high school to college. We hope you enjoy and thanks for listening. You can follow Kayla on twitter @BraillePrincess You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Blind Abilities once again presents this interview with Suman Kanuganti, CEO of Aira, a visual interpreter for the blind. Aira is not only progressing with its product, but it is making a significant splash in the technology world. Aira recently won the innovative technology award at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in early January. Additionally, Aira is bolstering it’s standing in the blindness community with its major partnership with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and with AT&T to strengthen its connectivity and accessibility with blind users. Listen to this interview and stay tuned as we are working on the follow-up interview with Suman, Aira users, and the sighted agents. Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Jeff and Pete offer another follow up interview with guests they previously interviewed with today’s visit with Marco trujillo, a co-founder of the Sunu Band. the Sunu Band is a smart bracelet that serves many purposes: it offers sonar-based navigation to detect obstacles     up to 15 feet away; it possesses the Sunu tag, a tile-like locator disk to help find your items, and a haptic watch to discretely tell the time. In addition, Marco has enhanced the product with cutting edge sensors and blue tooth technology that will accommodate future developing technology such as smart city beacon systems. You can find out more about the Sunu Band on the web here. Join Jeff Thompson and Pete Lane for this fascinating update on the Sunu Band. Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Here are 4 Apps that we highly recommend for those studying, working on papers, doing math, and for accessing the printed word for reading. Power Thesaurus is a powerful accessible app that gives you so many options when the word you are thinking of is just not the right fit. Search and find hundreds of other opportune words. Dictionary by Farlex is so much more than just a great Dictionary App. You can completely set up the app the way you want to use it. From “Word of the Day” to”On this d Day in History” you can choose what you want the app to give you. You can also check out the specific Dictionary for your needs from the Farlex family of dictionary apps. The Calculator App in the iPhone is not just a Basic calculator, turn your device to landscape mode and the Scientific Calculator is accessible and ready to perform. Great for the Algebra, Trig, and physics student as well as those doing bills, homework or checking out a budget. The KNFB Reader app is probably one of the most expensive apps and yet it does cost a pretty penny, this app is the best OCR app in the field. Highly recommended and well worth the investment. Snap a photo of the text and listen, that’s it. Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Another iAccess Demo from the iAccess series. You can find all the iAccess Demos on the web or in the App just click on the Category tab and pick iAccess. Pete Lane walks us through the IOS Storage managing feature in settings and how you can manage your storage on your iDevice. You can find out what apps are using the most of your storage space and decide if you want to clean up your storage to make room for apps, books, music or other items you may discover hogging up your storage. Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Twitter is a social network where people can send status updates, links, photos and now videos to followers using their mobile smart phone. These messages are called, “Tweets,” and by using the Twitter App one can follow, share and connect up with companies, newspapers, schools, teachers, classmates and any one who is on Twitter. This podcast is for the person who is interested in getting started Tweeting. We demonstrate the Twitter App because it is Free and does a great job doing what it is supposed to do. The Twitter App is fully accessible using VoiceOver on an Apple device such as the iPhone, iPad, or the iTouch. This demonstration is conducted on an iPhone and one can still get a good start using this podcast if they have an Android device using TalkBack. With a quick 10 minute run through of the basics from getting and setting up the Twitter App, we take you through the steps of composing a tweet, retweeting, replying, liking, and some explanations about the @ sign and the hashtag, use in a Tweet. So if you are interested in learning about Tweeting and have 10 minutes to spend, join Blind Abilities in this Twitter 101 Demonstration. Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Blind Abilities presents this in depth follow up with Bin Liu and Arjun Mali, Co-founders  of Imerciv Inc. and creators of the Buzz Clip. Join Jeff and Pete as they check in on this fascinating navigational device for the blind and visually impaired. This interview closes the loop from their initial chat back on January 17, 2016, which you can listen to here. Since then, the Buzz Clip has moved through its Indiegogo fund raiser campaign, and has seen refinements in its form factor. All previous orders have been filled and the price is set at $249 USD or Canadian. This device uses sonar technology to detect obstacles that may pose navigational hazards, and will supplement the cane or Guide Dog for a complete tool box of traveling tools. Join us for this stimulating look at the BuzzClip. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Blind Abilities visits the State Services for the Blind (SSB) in St. Paul, Minnesota. Jeff Thompson talks to the Transition Coordinator, Sheila Koenig about the Transition program for students age 14-21 transitioning from High School to College and the Workplace. Sheila talks about developing programs and creating opportunities through networking and partnerships across the state and Bridging all the entities to help the transition students receive the best opportunities for success. Sheila is also visually impaired and with her 16 years of teaching Middle School, she has a lot of experience to bring to her position as Transition Coordinator at State Services for the Blind of Minnesota. If you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Teen and Transition Coordinator Sheila via email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. To find your State Services in your State you can go to www.AFB.org and search the directory for your agency. For more podcasts with a Blindness perspective and to stay up to date with the latest from Blind Abilities, You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

The Free Braigo App in the App Store not only does quality OCR, the Brig App does some very interesting Object recognition, too. Jeff Thompson gives a quick demo of this new OCR app which actually does quite a good job reading the text and the accessibility is sweet. It would be nice to be able to open the created text in another app or copy the text to a word processing app but that doesn’t seem to be happening. You can save the photos here and there, but maybe I missed that. I like the simple set-up and the tap anywhere approach to take a picture. There is no location, tilt, or complexity you find in the KNFB Reader App, but, for FREE? I say they are off to a great start, especially with the effort to bring Object Recognition to the table. Possibly a wooden table at that! No, the object recognition is not all that and has a way to go but I have to give the Braigo App a strong 4 stars for being what it is. I would like to note that the images are stored in the camera roll and requires one to actually go to the camera roll and delete them as well as going into the Braigo App’s menu and deleting there as well. I sent a message to the dev team with this memory hog issue plus the fact that this happens without warning. You can get the Braigo App in the App Store. Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Christopher Venter, AKA TheBlindScooterGuy on all social networks, talks about the process leading up to his TEDX Talk presentation from Capetown, South Africa. As you may recall Christopher interviewed with us just this last summer telling us about his journey from South Africa to Dublin Ireland on his 50cc Scooter Bike leading to his Blindness and how he is eating that elephant called Blindness… one bite at a time. You can find his just released TEDx Talk on the web. Be sure to also check out his podcast on Blind Abilities Blind Scooter Guy: How To Eat An Elephant Called Blindness Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Wood Working is something that people have low expectations for the blind and probably think that it is too dangerous for their son/daughter or any person with limited or no vision to get involved with as a hobby or profession. Training centers across the states have proven that wood working can be done safely and successfully and require students to take the class not to actually become a carpenter but to challenge their clients to overcome a low expectation or fear and to teach transferable skills. Students may not go out and buy a table saw yet they will surely investigate a loose table leg or door handle because they will have the confidence and skills to believe that they can fix the problem. LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired has WoodWorking Classes several times a year so be sure to check their web site for the next opportunity. And if you happen to attend a Blindness Training Center and Wood Working is a class that is being offered, be sure to challenge yourself. You may just start looking into Woodworking to see if anyone else is doing it like David Albright did after losing his eye sight. . While at Enchanted Hills Camp David and Jeff took some time out in the wood shop to talk about David’s wood working and Fly Fishing passions. You can find out more about Wood Working for the blind on the web. Check out the programs at LightHouse for the Blind in San Fransisco on the web. Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App store.

Blind Abilities Presents: Senior Services for the Blind and the Silver Tsunami Senior Services for the Blind is available from your State Services. Paul mattsen, a counselor in the Senior Services Unit talks to us about what they offer and what the future looks like as the Baby Boomer’s Silver Tsunami approaches. With the vast number of seniors and the inevitable increase of people seeking blind services, state agencies are looking for ways to take on the challenge. Whether it be groups and organizations or local gatherings, anything to help the seniors gain access and learn about alternative techniques is just one more tool in the tool box as they face the increasing number of clients applying for services. Pete Lane talks about his iAccess group that teaches those in the Jacksonville area about the iPhone and how to use the Voiceover accessibility found in each Apple product. Lori Thompson shares her experience with a seniors group supported by State Services. Virginia Christianson tells us how she gained confidence while attending a Living with Blindness group. If you or someone you know is beginning to have difficulty reading the printed word, seeing at night, or seeing distances, call your state agency and find out what they offer. You can go to AFB.org and look up the contact information for your state. If you are from Minnesota, you can learn more about State Services and what they have to offer, on the web at www.MNSSB.org For more information and podcasts with a Blindness perspective: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.