Latest / The Eko Lens Podcast / The Future of Blind Tech: Accessibility, AI & Innovation with Scott
Transcript
- speaker-0: Welcome to the Echo Lens, the podcast where review assistive technology through the eyes of Lin's experience. I'm your host, Kenisha, and every episode we explore how dignity, design, and innovation really intersect to empower blind and low vision communities. We're not just reviewing tech, we're reframing it. And this is a space for truth-telling, for honoring voices that often go unheard, and for challenging the industry to do better. So whether you're a developer, a user, Or someone who simply believes in equity. You're in the right place. This is the equivalence. Let's take a closer look. So welcome back, everyone. This week we have Scott Joffrey and I found Scott in one of our groups online. ⁓ we crossed some paths and they showed some interest on being on the podcast. And Scott is a influencer, ⁓ the blind striker, and I was able to look up his his pages and his YouTube and there's some really neat stuff on there. So thanks for connecting, Scott. We're excited to have you on today. speaker-1: Of course. It's just so happy to be here. speaker-0: Scott really brought into this Scott really brought into the space the the need for screen descriptions. And I really want to first and foremost, before we go into that, like thank you for elevating that because that's something that I want to incorporate further. I am new to the blind low vision community myself. So I'm learning new things every day about new ways of accessibility. So speaker-1: Yeah, I mean I just say it would be helpful. Yeah, yeah. speaker-0: We have Scott. And ⁓ Scott is on his ⁓ red couch with his teal ball behind him and Scott is wearing a blue T shirt that says Life is Delightful and has speaker-1: Green tree shirt, but yeah, yeah. Sorry. speaker-0: Green, blue, green. It looks sort of blue or green on speaker-1: It's I don't I think it's I think it's gray actually. I think the pickle's green, but i it's ⁓ it's alright. It's alright. speaker-0: And has a cam it has a camel hat on with that. I see that part, but speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just whatever you see. speaker-0: And my vision right now I see just in in my office, ⁓ wearing, you know, my glasses, my black my black t shirt today, my headphones. I'm just, you know, keeping it chill today. But excited to have you in the space today, Scott. speaker-1: Yeah, thank you so much. It's is again it's it's really an honor to be here and be do podcasts and stuff and helping out the blind. speaker-0: Yeah, so ⁓ Scott, do you can you tell us a little bit about your journey and your connection to the blind and low vision community? speaker-1: Yeah, of course. So I was born with an offense of prematurity and essentially what that means is that I was born really early. And due to that, my eyes didn't fully develop. I was born twenty six weeks early, one pound and eight ounces, so very tiny miracle baby. ⁓ throughout the years, you know, I've always had bad vision, but essentially it got so bad to the point where I had a hard time identifying things. Essentially my mom who does commercial cleaning, she reached out to, you know, an eye doctor that she cleans for is now, you know, a good friend of mine, Dr. Dorothy Hitchmouth, and ⁓ she's a private eye doctor in my state and she she looked in my eyes, she examined them examined them and was like, Okay, you know, here's what's up. You know, you have cataracts, you're you're gonna lose your sight completely. And I didn't really know how to, you know, cope that because I'm you I'm so used to doing things, you know, more independent than I you know, can now, right? Not saying that I can't be independent, but it's it's it's a lot more yeah, you you lose some of that independence, right? And I guess I didn't really know what to expect in the future, just scared you know, not being able to do the things I used to do, like like to do, like going for walks and playing video games. But you know, essentially that opened the door for me to do accessibility testing, ⁓ for companies. ⁓ she she offered me to help her out from time to time in her office, you know, testing technology and and helping other people and learn that technology, essentially. Right. And my mom was like, he he would love to do it, you know, 'cause I had no clue what it was at the time at the time. I had no clue. And, you know, ever since then I've been emailing companies and doing podcasts like this. So and the whole awareness is to to spread the, you know, to help people and spread awareness towards blindness and that you can really do anything, you know. speaker-0: How long was it from when you met with the doctor until you lost your sight? Do you know? speaker-1: It was a year. It was a year. About a year. ⁓ So Yeah, so I had a I I had a crescent of vision in ⁓ my right eye that was still seeable, you know, still usable. Uh-huh. But she's like, You're gonna lose that little crescent that you have. 'Cause I ⁓ I guess for the longest time, I don't know, maybe middle school, early or late elementary school, I probably had cataracts. At least a cataract in my left eye. And and we had no clue how long it's been there. But, you know, my vision Has been crazy, a crazy journey. speaker-0: So what was some of your experience when you first lost your vision and you were learning about new accessibility technologies? So, like what did that look like for you? What were some of the first things that you needed or chose to learn about? speaker-1: You know, I think the first yeah, I guess just basic things like how to navigate through my phone with with voiceover screen reader. Another thing is O and ⁓ training. That was a those are the two big key ones I think I had to learn 'cause again, no, I was just getting out of high school. I wasn't really doing much. And now, you know, I I recently graduated to Care Center for the Blind, so now you know, I got to ex ex expand that s ⁓ broad more with like JOS screen reader. I'm not perfect with it, but I I have some knowledge with navigating through my computer and I think that's Some stuff I still need to learn. speaker-0: So you did mention that you went to the Carol School for Who Blind. Can you tell us a little bit about what that was? speaker-1: Yeah, when first went there, ⁓ it was a whole new experience for me. now being ho away from home for two weeks was like probably the longest time because, you know, I I usually just chill here, do my own thing. I don't really, you know, go out and do things. I mean I do, but you know what I mean, like do daily day trips, right? Uh-huh. But two weeks out there, it was it opened up the door for the longest time, you know, I was scared, I was nervous, I didn't really Talk to a lot of people 'cause I'm like, well, this is new. Like what do I you know? I'm not the greatest person when it comes to I guess starting conversations. I mean I can. I'm a really talkative person, but when it comes to after a couple days and they know me, it's like, what do you talk about? You know? Mm-hmm. But essentially, over time, you know, I got to make new friends. ⁓ had a really f ⁓ funny w ⁓ funny roommate, you know, of mine who used to just talk about random things and you know, I know there's there's an experience for me I'm making my bed at like ten o'clock at night and you know, it's a stupid blind moment where I thought my bed was you know, I was more on my bed than I really was and I fell off my bed. But luckily you know, I caught myself but but but it it it's it's funny, you know. And honestly they've they've helped me out a lot. Main mainly with O and ⁓ another cool thing I got to do with them was, you know, since I knew a lot about the mobile devices and just from personal experience and and and learning is the fact that I got to teach other clients. So the teachers would be like asking me for help. And it was like, okay. You know, so even to this day, you know, I actually emailed them about an app called Lumen, which, you know, it's like a digital email. You can navigate it through your voice. And they're like, ⁓ this is sick. This is pretty cool. So huge shout out to you, Lumen. speaker-0: Yeah, that sounds amazing. Yeah. So now you're taking your knowledge that you're learning and growing and you're also using it to help other people. So would you say that you're doing more like accessibility training for others now? speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ i if you would say, yeah. I mean my my YouTube channel, you know, I do tech reviews and I just share my personal experiences when it comes to being blind. I think that's that's part of it. Like, you know, 'cause sometimes I'll share or a lot of the times I'll do tech reviews and with like the meta glasses or you know, or ⁓ Chat GPT, stuff like that. But then I also share like personal like pictures, like I'll make funny video ⁓ funny posts on social media. I think there was one whereas I was hanging out with my family, you know, ⁓ family the other day. See my grandfather's and cousins, stuff like that. And ⁓ you know, I'm I I I told my mom, I'm like, you it'd be funny if ⁓ we hung out on my ⁓ cousin's ⁓ dirt bike, right? So so we put me on the dirt bike and I had my cane, I was holding it and ⁓ they took a picture of it. But it's just a funny humor, you know what I mean? For for blindness. I just try to make people laugh. I mean, of course I'm not gonna go around and and ride a dirt bike, you know, when I can't see. I mean hey, maybe I can use it through my eyes. But but I mean but I can use I copy my eyes and be like, hey, they could look through my meta glasses and that'd be that would be a really cool experience. But I mean I wouldn't I I wouldn't do that. That's that's really not smart. No, no, no. So I'm not doing that, guys. I promise I'm not. It's just a joke. speaker-0: Yeah, that's not safe. Well, tell us a little bit more about your YouTube. speaker-1: Yeah, so I started it back in well, I started social media actually. Back in twenty twenty three, I think I just started posting little short clips of ⁓ an app I was testing called Alley by Envision. And you know, I was just posting little clips, sharing updates and stuff about it 'cause it was a really cool app and you know it's it's still pretty cool. I mean, I don't use it as much as I I did 'cause it's been pretty slow lately, but essentially, you know I really enjoyed that help and you know it was a really cool connection. ⁓ I got to meet ⁓ Sam from the Blind Life through ⁓ a future in sight walk for sight event and ⁓ essentially, you know, me and him talked about YouTube and I asked him for advice and I was like, Hey, you know, I I I this sounds so interesting, like how how do I get involved with it? And then from there, you know, he he told me, you know, just be yourself and you know do what you love to do, really, is is essentially And then from there I just started making videos and and I'm worrying along the way. I mean, before, if you guys look at my previous videos, you know, there's there's simple, you know, descriptions that I write out, one or two sentences. But essentially now I use Chat GPD to help me with that. You know, I'll I'll do a description of my video and I'll be like, Hey, you know, give me a and it'll write a sorry, it will write out a response based off of that. And I'll just go in there delete some stuff that I know shouldn't be in there and then you know, delete some hashtags or re-edit things and and then yeah, you know, I have the descriptions. I also include a accessibility like disclosure thing that I'm blind. So, you know, if you guys get, you know, a little flaky about my my videos and stuff, just know, you know, I am blind and I'm doing this all by myself. Yeah. Post ⁓ recording, editing and, you know, writing out descriptions, all that fun jazz, you know. speaker-0: Have you tried using Picky Bot? I think we talked about that a little bit, but Picky Bot will Picky Bot will describe your your video for you. speaker-1: ⁓ I ha I've heard of it. ⁓ the thing that I I don't know how long ago you know, I used it, but I was I don't know if there's anything updated with that, but I know when I tried it, ⁓ it wouldn't give me the audio for the video. It would just give me the description, so I was like, That's not you know, I I speaker-0: There's some new updated stuff going on. ⁓ we've we sometimes work pretty closely with the speaker-1: Yeah. So I'll have to definitely check that out. speaker-0: Yeah. Martine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So is there like a tool or technology that you wish existed? speaker-1: I wish there was an easy well there's there's a couple of things, but the I think the easiest thing is probably being able to stitch videos together and being able to identify like ums, pauses and and and stutters. Because that's essentially what's hard for me because I have to go in my camera roll or my photos and I have to you know, say you take a twenty minute video, you have to go in there, swipe, and it goes by seconds or milliseconds, depending on how long the video is. And you have to edit it precisely, save that clip, and then keep doing that until you get all the little clips you want and then you have to stitch it all together. Now I think speaker-0: Really cool is Riverside, what we're using right now. You should look into it. There is a free version, but it does it for you. speaker-1: Yeah. And I think two was cool. Yeah. I don't know if you watched the the Apple keynote yesterday. Mm-mm. It it it was really nice. So they they talked about Siri and you know, huge AI advan advances, stuff that was supposed to come out two years ago. Uh-huh. And essentially you can have it do tasks for you without actually having to open the apps. So if you activated Siri and said, Hey, you know, take this video I have and speaker-0: No. speaker-1: you know, edit it for me or something. It w it might be able to do it. I mean I I'll have to try it with my iPad once ⁓ I get access to like the the public beta, maybe maybe it might work. We'll see. Yeah. You know. speaker-0: Let well let me know how that works. I don't use my I don't use my Apple functionalities as much as as much as I should. speaker-1: Of course. And it's something that gets an annoying about that is the fact that it's very limited to the newer devices. And I think that's that's a downgrade for accessibility, really. And and and I know we talked about some some sample questions and stuff before we started recording. But essentially that's something I want is for things to be more accessible in general. Yeah. So for n no matter what you're doing, ⁓ I I think that would be great to see across companies and stuff. speaker-0: So tell me about your cane a little bit because it's really cool and I I need folks to hear about your cool cane. speaker-1: Yeah, so what I'm holding is actually a a new cane that we announced the other day at the NFB state convention. I think it's a couple of weeks ago. Okay. But let me try to get this undone here. Yes. It's essentially a folding white sword. speaker-0: Is. It looks like a folding light. It is it's a folding lightsaber so speaker-1: Like Yeah, we can't say lightsaber though. You know, we can't say lightsaber. But yes, we all know what it is. Yeah, yeah. You can't you can't you can't say lightsaber, but speaker-0: Or okay. Like at does it does it light up different colors and stuff or speaker-1: So this one does not ⁓ since this is a lightweight one, this is a ⁓ this is a eleven ounce. This might be a little heavier 'cause I have a a metal handle on it, but essentially it's eleven ounce cane, has a rolling marshmallow. Now this is a little different because I took this one off of my ⁓ my no jab cane and I put it on this one. But essentially you can put ⁓ hook style ⁓ tips in this, which is nice. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And then if I speaker-0: I like the rolling marshmallow tip myself. That's like the only one I use. speaker-1: Yeah. And something that's cool about this too, I'm adjusting it. I can make the the the handle bigger and or smaller. So essentially I can make the blade bigger or small smaller, sorry. Which say if you know you have a fifty inch cane, right? You need five or six more inches, maybe as you grow, maybe good for kids as they're growing. You don't have to go buy a whole new cane because then you can adjust the handle. Yeah. And ⁓ you can swap out handles. I know there was a there was a ⁓ a a light up one that actually I posted about the other day on my ⁓ my channel. I had posted it and my friend had done a a demo with the actual Star Wars themed one where it lights up different colors, it plays music, it has sounds and stuff. Wow. All these canes are able to mute, of course. Now I'm trying to unscroll this and I think it has a little style ⁓ jeez. It has a little style ⁓ flashlight. That's how the Okay. speaker-0: Okay, I was I was going to ask, is it rechargeable or do you take the battery? speaker-1: It is. So if I sorry, these like little nubs are not being nice to me. I keep it in there so that the flashlight doesn't shake around in there, but it has a big battery. You can charge it with type C or you can put two double A batteries. So say if this thing charge dead or sorry, it's dead. Go to C V S with two double A batteries, put ⁓ in here and they'll be fine. But yeah, essentially the whole idea with this particular model of cane, the the the new two piece locking telescopic cane and this folding one I'm holding is that you can, you know, one, it's affordable, right? And two, that it can be replaced easily. So say if you break a part of the cane, you know, you pay for that individual part, or if you the flashlight dies out on you, you can go on Amazon and buy the flashlight and put it in there. speaker-0: Okay. So where can we find the cane? speaker-1: Yeah, so my friend of course makes these. They're on ⁓ Sideways Innovations and you can also find a link to them on my YouTube channel. speaker-0: Yeah, which I'll link here. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Yeah, of course. Of course Lee, this is not being nice to me trying to put this back on. speaker-0: No, that's really interesting. Thanks for showing us that because when you had told me about it, I was like cool. I think I might need one of those because I think it's browse them. speaker-1: ⁓ there we go. Okay, that's why it wasn't 'cause this wasn't twisting hard enough, I guess. Yeah, no. speaker-0: Great. Well, what are you thinking about when it comes to future? Like what what would you like to see with the next generation of innovators and designers and advocates when it comes to understanding our community? speaker-1: Yeah, ⁓ I think just making, you know, ⁓ you know, apps more accessible, right? Yeah. You know, a lot of these companies love flashy designs and, you know, cool effects, right? But the thing is when they add all these features, all these AI features, all these, you know, things, the thing that sucks about it is that it breaks old features. So having, you know People understand, okay, like accessibility needs to come first, you know, still fix these and and maintain these old features, but also have the ability to add, you know, new ones and make sure they're actually working. Cause I noticed there's there's some companies, especially Facebook, you know, they add a couple new features and it breaks features that, you know, we loved or we were able to use easily, or they add things. I I remember there's one where it was like, You hover your voice over over a post and it doesn't read the entire post, it reads part of it, and then you have to tap on it and open it to h be able to view it and it it was so annoying. Or the the back button issue was not working with with Facebook. So it's just small things like that, you know what I mean? speaker-0: You know what's really interesting is ⁓ so I work in tech a little bit and I am on the end that helps build. So speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: I've I've learned not just my my area but others, but we don't bring in the right people to be able to test it out, right? Like I should be not not me, right? But like make Facebook or whoever is building, if if we're going to make sure that these things are accessible for blind and low vision folks, we need to be bringing blind and low vision people in to test it before we're deploying it. So speaker-1: Well of course. I mean that's that's what I think too. Like I think a lot of these companies are like, ⁓ no, it's accessible when when we complain about it and they're like, ⁓ yeah, we tested it, like how do we know? Like maybe you just turned on the screen reader for five minutes and and played around with it. ⁓ it works and just left it be. Like the biggest thing about accessibility isn't with gaming too. ⁓ there's one company that is that I know of that's out there that just barely added accessibility features due to the fact that the EU kind of forced them to And that's Nintendo. Nintendo, you know. Yeah. ⁓ brilliant. Yeah, and yeah, Nintendo, yeah. The the Switch two, they added ⁓ screen reader support, but for the mo for a lot of the internal like technology when like navigating through the eShop or you know, navigating through some of the chat menus, it just it doesn't read it. You know. That's very interesting. Or or not will I play it. I know, I I wanna play I wanna play Nintendo. I mean I grew up on Nintendo but Yeah. It can't really do anything 'cause of the lack of accessibility. So it would be cool to help them out eventually, you know. speaker-0: Yeah, that folks don't think about, right? That we want us to the same things, right? Scott, well your story is your story is super, super interesting and and you know, thanks for sharing space with us today. We're gonna make sure that we link all of your stuff for the blind striker to the show notes so everyone will be able to come and visit. And, you know, I'm sure that we're gonna have you on again because I wanna do some accessibility conversations with you on certain things. So speaker-1: Exactly. speaker-0: We'll definitely be speaker-1: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It was it's an honor to be on here. speaker-0: Yeah. So thank you everyone for joining us on the Echo Lens, where we do assist the tech through the eyes of lived experience. If today's conversation sparks something in you, share it, rate it, and keep the dialogue going. To learn more about the beautiful project or to support our work, you can visit Echovision Foundation.org. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected, and keep staying with love. Bye everyone.