Accessibility

Chime needs a new tuner for his television. His favorite station is shifting to ATSC 3. It also needs to support text to speech. Leo says that TV stations are moving to ATSC because it'll give them more audio interaction features and side channels for additional content.  Additionally,  you will need to rescan your television set on December 7, 2021 after 10:00 a.m. PT in order to continue receiving that broadcast. The good news is that those tuners are as low as $25, so it won't cost a ton to weather the transition.

Pat has a Google Pixel 5, and her husband has a Pixel 4. But after the Android 12 update, the Clock Widget and the PIN interface have gotten large. How can she reduce it? Leo says it sounds like the accessibility settings for the display have been changed. Look under Text and Display and see what the font size is. You can reduce them there. Also, look to see if Magnification has been enabled and turn that off. 

Julian Vargas calls in to recommend free or low cost camera text reader options like the iPhone. There's an app called SeeingAI from Microsoft. It's a collection of tools for the blind to access information including pointing the phone camera to the text and it reads what it sees.  On the Android side, there's also an app called  Google Lookout.

Jim wants to know if there's a text-to-speech reader out there. Leo says that there are a lot of text-to-speech devices out there.  Leo hasn't used any, but MyEye by Orcam looks interesting. It attaches to glasses, which makes it interesting. But also expensive. 

Jay is nearly blind and is looking to improve his accessibility to a computer. Leo says that both Microsoft and Apple work hard to make iOS, Android, Windows and Mac good with accessibility. What is the most accessible computer for the money? Leo says HP, Dell and Apple are all very good with accessibility. Leo recommends going to a big box store like Costco and get one. Costco has a great price, usually on older models, and a very liberal return policy. So if you bring it home and don't like it, they'll refund your money up a month after purchase.

Edward is legally blind and wants to know if an iPad would be useful to him, especially with the keyboard. Leo says that an iPad has great accessibility features with voice dictation and screen reading. But the keyboard is digital and that could be a challenge for typing. But Apple has created a ton of features, and Edward can always connect a hardware keyboard to it via Bluetooth.  But try turning on voiceover and rely on Siri to dictate within any text field. It's pretty good. 

Don is blind and wants to know if he can run iDrive from the keyboard. The accessibility isn't all that great. Leo says that the best outcome is to talk to iDrive about it, and Leo can help. Send him an email at leo@leoville.com.

Joseph downloaded and installed Windows 11 to try it out. He's blind and wanted to see how good the accessibility features are. The built-in screen reader worked really well.  But he had a little trouble with it. The face recognition feature stopped working, so he had to reinstall it. Leo said that was an issue with the last update, which clobbered it. It's been fixed now. 

John is vision-impaired and uses Linux in order to go online. He uses ORCA, a graphical user interface in order to go online. He also uses a screen reader called "Speak up." But what can he use to encrypt his data? Leo recommends BitWarden (TWiT sponsor), though he isn't sure how the accessibility is.

Ken got a new Vizio TV for Christmas, and he uses closed captioning. But it appears in the middle of the picture. Nobody seems to know how to move it to the bottom, where it belongs. Leo says that it could be a setting on the TV that does it. It depends on where the closed captioning is coming from. Check out this tech note from Vizio. Press CC on the remote. Then the menu.