Community Unmuted - 7 DEC

This has been an ACB community call. Today's Community Unmuted was hosted on. Hold on, let me do a little bit of math in my head. December 7, 2024.

Good morning everyone and welcome back to Unmute on a Saturday Morning. This is number two of us giving us a whirl on Saturday. So welcome everyone, new and old. A couple things here at the top. We wanted to let everyone know that we're going to take all first questions first. So we want to get through everyone's first questions and if we have time, we'll take second questions at the end. We also ask everyone to please be respectful to each other and there's no dumb questions. Uh, as always, we've got Michael Doyce here with us. How you doing, Michael?

I'm doing great, Marty. It's good to be here. Uh, awesome time on Saturdays, uh, and hope we can answer some good questions today. Sounds good. And we also have Liz Botner with us. Say hello, Liz. Hello, Liz. And as usual, we got Michael Babcock. How you doing, Michael?

You're. You're just not even gonna address that? You're, you're just gonna move on. I completely get it. I'm doing well, Marty. Thanks a lot. Um, so I am not going to go over everything we've published over the last month simply because it's been a bit of content. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go over here to Unmute show, which is what you can do as well. And then we're going to find a heading here that says, that says latest episodes. Stay current with the latest episodes of Unmute. And Chris posted on Thursday. Holiday greeting cards. If you're interested in how to build out some craft kind of related to that URL promo that we placed earlier, this stream can't talk today. Anyways, you can check that out in order to get some details about building things with braille on Digital Bytes. We had our first of December episode which honestly, it's been a little while since I remember what we did. So I'm going to pull that up real quick and tell you what the three things we covered were on there. And while we did that, while we do that, we have the Tech Tip 1, which was the OpenRun Pro headset, by the way. Quick side note, I really like these headsets. If you're a shock user, Shokz user, you might want to check them out. Gives you actual bass with your Shokz headset. So really enjoyed those. And then there was navigating screen Recognition with iPhone. Chris gave you some tips for that. And then Marty showed you how to customize the Today View. Maybe he told you what the Today View is too as well on your iPhone to be able to customize that experience. Last Friday we, we called the community together and 10 of you submitted content. I said nine in the beginning of it, but we got one really late so we threw hers in and just kind of slipped it in during editing. Ten of you came together and shared some thoughtful gadgets to share with the community related to technology. Liz and Marty talked about seeing AI and Google Lookout on Android. And then on last Sunday's Digital Bytes, Marty talked to you about Spotlight Search. Damasi came on and guest presented some older content called Loopback with the vocaster. And then I shared. No Chris shared Spotlight tips I think and then anyways, but listen to it because I don't remember from the title. My bad. Marty, do you have something else you want to mention before we reach over to Marcy to see if there's any questions?

Yeah, yeah, we wanted to let everyone know that if you have something that you want to review or maybe a service in the around the tech industry and accessibility. We're taking submissions for Digital Bytes. So you know, a couple minutes long, a few minutes, 5ish minutes somewhere in that range. But if you have something, record it and you can send it into Feedback Mute show. And if you want to go back and check out any of the other Digital Bytes to kind of see how that goes and what we're doing there, you can find find all of those on the website which is Unmute Show. So yeah, if you have stuff, send it in. Not everyone will get chosen, but we will look at every single one that we get and we will put them out there if we have space. So with that Marcy, we got any hands?

Gregory, please.

Hello, Gregory. Happy holidays everybody. To you as well. I heard you on Double Tap several times, so appreciate hearing your voice. Yeah, I've apparently forgotten how to hook up a pair of headphones. Covered ear headphones, a microphone. Got a 3.5 connector through my HP laptop and I, I've do it or I forgot how to do it or how to go in and Gotcha. Yeah. So this is the 3.5 millimeter connector that should plug into the side of your laptop. Is that correct? And when you plug it in, audio just doesn't switch there is what the problem is. Audio. I can hear a little bit of audio, but microphone apparently doesn't work or so if you go into Windows here's where I would start looking. If you press your Windows key B like Bravo, Windows key B like Bravo, that should take you to your system tray. Then you can right arrow to your volume controls, shift F10 on that, and then go down to sound. I forget the exact terminology, but sound mixer, I think, is what it is. And you can go in there, and there's a combo box for input and a combo box for output. I would change both of those to the external headset. It should show up in that combo box. You may need to press alt down arrow to get the combo box to open and then press enter once the proper input and output is selected. And that should fix it. Possibly. But it really should work just by plugging and playing, I think so. It's really interesting. It's not. Okay, I'll give that a try, guys. Yeah. Certainly appreciate it. Do we have any other hands? Marcy?

We're clear. Oh, you bring. You bring fun news. That means we've got to fill up some time here. Unless any of these individuals have hands they want to raise and ask. Except we have one. Deanna, please. Hey, Deanna.

Hi. My system used to be that I could unplug my logitech if I weren't actually hosting or doing something, and it would operate through these two external speakers up on the top of my workspace. And for some reason now when I unplug it, I don't get my speakers coming up. And I'm not sure what has changed, but it seems like I'm updating things constantly since I'm an ACB host, and whenever I do something will mess up for a while. So I was listening to that last speaker, wondering, huh? I've traced the cords from the two speakers, I've checked the volume on the speaker units themselves, and everything seems to be plugged in. So do I need to go to that same area to look and see if my external speakers attached to my desktop are active there?

So when you unplug your logitech headset, do you lose all audio or only audio from specific apps? Like, does any audio come out of your speakers at all?

It doesn't appear to be. That's what I was trying to figure out was because, as I said, when I was busy doing stuff and I didn't want to be tied to my computer, I would unplug my headset and then I could listen to a program or whatever without being tied to my computer because I didn't have any intention to raise my hand during that one. And now it doesn't do that. So I was thinking of waiting forever and seeing if Microsoft could trace the problem. But I decided since I was here today, I would ask you.

Yeah, that's where I would check. Is going to go to Windows B for Bravo. That'll take you to your system tray right arrow until you get to your volume shift F10 and then I believe it's Sound Control Panel. I guess I can look real quick and tell you exactly what it's saying because it's not super busy. But I'll tell you exactly what the wording should be here. So when I go over here to system tray, helps if I hit the right button. So yeah, I'm going to hit shift F10 now. And it's Sound Settings is what it's called. So you're going to have three options here. You're going to have troubleshoot sound problems. I've never found that to be helpful, but you can try that. There's Open Volume Mixer which allows you to adjust the volume of different applications and tools within Windows. And then the third option three of three is Sound Settings. When I press enter on Sound Settings, this takes me directly to the Sound Settings within the settings dialog that you can also get to by pressing Windows key. I like India. If you press tab 1 2, three times, you're going to hear output. Choose where to play sounds speakers and then you press it one more time and there's a list box. I think I called it a combo box. And this list box lets you pick the different outputs that are available on your computer. If you press tab 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 times, that's a little convoluted. Microsoft currently in this version of Windows that I have and as we all know, it can be slightly different. But if you press Tab several times, we'll say 6, you'll get to microphone. It'll actually say input. Choose a device for speaking to your computer or to speak. Choose a device for speaking or recording and that's a button. If you tab once past that button, you'll be in another list box with a list of all of the inputs for your computer that you can pick from as well.

Okay, well, I don't think I've got. I never did use speech with my computer talking to it. Gotcha. So I don't think I have anything listed there then except that you know the plug and play of the Logitech. Logitech. Yeah, yeah, yep, yep. But that's where I would start looking. You may need cause do you lose your screen reader output when you unplug the logitech as well, so you don't have any sound? I don't know. I hadn't really tried to do anything with it, but I think so.

Okay. Yeah. That's where I would check then, is in that system tray. You can go down there and get your sound settings. Yeah. Okay, perfect. Deanna, thanks a lot for your questions. I am not seeing any other hands, so I'm going to pick on some. Some random question. I have a question. Oh, go ahead, Michael.

First, Michael D. We had some questions submitted about shortcuts. One of the questions that we had was, is there a way to create a shortcut that can share a photo from Be My Eyes to imessage or to messages? So I think you would have to. That you would take the photo with Be My Eyes or would you get the description from Be My Eyes? I think it was meant to be if it was described in Be My Eyes, a photo, and then you could share that photo into messages.

So I know you can pick a photo, have it described the photo as an action, and Be my eyes, I believe, and then take the same photo and then use the share action or share with to share the photo into messages. Now, I'm not sure if you can get the description to share, but I know that you can take the photo and move it through that workflow in the shortcut to then share it. But I'm not sure if you could do anything with the described text.

I think you'd have to copy that text during the process and then use that description in the message. So you'd probably get prompted for the message you want to send and who you want to send that message to and then paste in that description. Because I think you're right. I don't think the description can be passed through as a variable to the shortcut. Right. Well, perfect. Thank you.

Well, then I got question number two, Michael, one more for you. Any shortcut that's either already created, that's inside the Shortcuts app, or one that you created or that someone created? The question was, how would you save that to an easy accessible place like on the home screen or anything like that, so you don't have to go and dig through Shortcuts app every single time you want to access a shortcut.

So there's two ways. The first way is one of the widgets you can add to your home screen is the shortcuts widget, and you can add that and you could pick a specific shortcut or shortcuts to show there are small, medium and large widgets for shortcuts. So that's one way you can add your shortcuts to the home screen. Or when you go and you see the name, if you go to edit your shortcut, you could go to the shortcut's name and you could bring down the menu where it says, you know, edit, rename, all that good stuff. One of the options, I believe is add to home screen and that adds the shortcut to your home screen as an icon, just like you're opening an app. And the other thing to keep in mind, and this is the power of shortcuts, is you can create a shortcut with one action or as many actions as you want and then use the name of the shortcut with Siri. So, for example, one of the things that I like about my Echo devices, I can tell my Echo play my book and it will play the latest audiobook at the current position in Audible. You could do the same with the shortcuts app. So you can add a shortcut action for playbook on Audible and then I set it to play my book. So I say, hey, S lady, play my book and it plays my Audible book just like on the Echo devices. So that's why, you know, with just the power of voice and Siri, you could do a lot more than what you can normally do with your iPhone and Siri.

Now, if I wanted to find some shortcuts to be able to play with shortcuts or see what other people have done, where's a good place for that, Michael?

So there's two places. There is the gallery in the shortcuts app, and that is curated shortcuts that Apple has created. And I've created a website called beyond the Gallery, beyond the Gallery app where you can submit and find shortcuts that others have submitted. And it's a cool place to find and talk about shortcuts and things like that. And again, this is awesome. Beyond the Gallery app.

Now, if anyone has a question, feel free to raise your hand. For the meantime, Michael joined in, I think just planning to sit in the background, but we're going to pick on him a little bit more. Do you still have to go into shortcuts and go to your settings and say, allow third party shortcuts?

Do you know, you know, whenever I set up my new phone, I think a dialogue came up whenever I tried to open a shortcut that said, would you like to allow this? But I don't exactly remember what I had to go through. It's a lot easier Than what it used to be. For sure. For sure. We do have some hands. Yeah, we do have some hands. Alrighty, Belle, who do we have in clubhouse, please? Jane, go ahead. Hey, Jane. Yeah.

Jane, I talked to you yesterday. I talked to a lot of people yesterday. We are not hearing you, Jane. You're so muted. Jane submitted a gift to the gift guide. So if you haven't heard that yet, go to Unmute show and check out the Unmute presents holiday gift guide. It's a. I forget what she. Oh, she submitted light for your canes. That's right. Oh, maybe I shouldn't have given that gift away while she's working on that. Marcy, who else do we have? Ann. Hey, Ann. Hi. Can you hear me?

We can. Yes, ma'am. I'm telling you what. I am glad you are back. Well, thank you very much. I have so missed you. Well, thank you. Thank you. It felt like you went away. Well, we did. We did go away. Well, don't stay away. Okay? Because I need you. We're just figuring out days and times, you know, we're kind of messing around with that a little bit and figuring out what kind of would. Right.

We were getting a lot of feedback from people saying, are you ever going to be around? You know, not during the week, in the middle of the day. So we're trying to figure out how to. There's no time that's going to work for everybody. Exactly. No way. Yep, yep.

You know, so. But with messages on the phone, I'm having a hard time. I usually do it with Siri, but there are some situations where you can't do that. And so if I want to reply to a message, let's say that instead of a name, it has a number, a number to it, and I want to reply to it. How can I go in and reply to the message?

So if you're in the list of all the people that have sent you a message, you know, and I open it and you open it and then you're in the body, you go down to the bottom and there's going to be a text box and you do a single finger double tap on that text box and that will open up the keyboard and you can either type or on the bottom right corner there's a little microphone that says dictate and you can do a single finger double click on that and you can dictate or you can type on the keyboard.

If you dictate, how do you get out of it? You do a two finger double tap to end the Dictation as well? Yeah. Well, can you do the same thing in email as far as dictation? You can do it anywhere there's a keyboard, actually. So anywhere a keyboard will open up, you will have a dictating button on the bottom right corner. So you can dictate anywhere you want. Anywhere you can text with email. If you, if you double tap, I guess it's going to ask you for the email address, correct?

Well, I mean, you can put that in whenever you want to, but it won't let you send the email until you put someone in the to box. Right. But can you say it instead of type it?

You can, but it's not. The problem with names is that it doesn't always like for example, let's say, you know, you put Michael Babcock in two, right. It may just type out Michael Babcock and not actually put the email address. So you kind of have to put an initial so that it will open up something from your contacts. And then underneath it's going to show you a list of the names of people with email addresses that you have in your contacts. And you can do a single finger double click.

So then do you, do you flick to the subject and say it? You could, yeah, you could like swipe to the right until you get to subject. And then if you want to dictate, then you go down to the bottom right corner where the dictate button is. You just have to make sure that the voiceover cursor is in the text box you want to be in. So subject or body or whatever the case may be. So when you flick to the subject, you, you can't just start saying it. You have to go to the bottom. Correct.

To what's at the bottom? The dictating button or the keyboard. You have to double tap that again. Yes. And then you say the subject and then you flip flick I guess again to the body. Message to the body. But do you have to press the dictate button again for that? Yes, it's going to stop at. When you go out of each section, typically it stops. But do you have to press the double tap again to stop or will it automatically stop?

You have to press it again to stop. Like do a double, a two finger double click. Okay, that's been kind of confusing. Yeah, I'll have to play around with it. Okay, thanks.

Yeah, no problem. Another thing is you can do, if it's like something that you're in a place where you want to put something quickly, you know, you can always go into the keyboard section. And there's what's called text replacement, where you can, like, type out a bunch of things and then use a keyboard shortcut to populate a whole entire sentence, you know, and then you don't have to dictate if it's too loud or, you know, you can't type fast enough to if you don't have a lot of time or something like that. So that's another way to put things in quickly.

Okay. Okay. Well, thanks. Yeah, no problem. Thank you, Ann, for that question. Mel, were we able to get Jane and muted? Yeah. Dan, are you unmuted now? I'm trying if it. There you go. Yes. I just got a new. It was a crazy sale on Monday from the developer from Keyboard Maestro. Yes. Mac app. I got that for half off and. Now I think we lost you. Oh, sounds like she was traveling.

It was a crazy keyboard maneuver that I never understood. How my capstock key kept going from capsoc to whatever it is. Ah, okay. Yep. So I think I understand. So you keep cutting out, Jane. So I think that I understand what you're saying. Let us know if this is what you're saying. So you're having an issue with your CAPS Lock key after you installed Keyboard Maestro, Is that correct? With Parallels and Windows, with the CAPS Lock and then the Mac 2. Okay. Like, I want it to be agnostic.

So that when I'm on the Mac. The CAPS lock behaves one way, but when I'm on Windows, the CAPS lock behaves. Copy that. Okay. Yep. So. So you want. And you use CAPS Lock as your screen reader modifier in Windows. I'm trying. If it works. Yep.

So it does work. Two solutions you can have. Number one, if you drop us an email to Feedback Mute Show, I can send you a Keyboard Maestro macro group that's a lot of ms, a Keyboard Maestro macro group that you can simply open and that'll open in Keyboard Maestro and then you find the little checkbox that says enable, and then that should fix your CAPS lock key for you automatically to work as an insert key in Windows and then as a CAPS lock key in macOS. That way you can use your capsockey to be the modifier in both operating systems. The other thing you can do, and I almost recommend this a little better for newer Keyboard Maestro users because it gives you an opportunity to become experienced more with the Keyboard Maestro interface, which, once you figure out how to navigate it, is not as complicated as it seems. I'll give you a tip for adding actions here in a minute, but What I would do is drop, jump over to ChatGPT or Claude and say, hey, here's the problem I need to solve. Here's access to the tools that I have. Can you guide me through creating this to make it happen? And so you would say something like, hey, I need my CAPS lock key to be a CAPS lock key in macOS, but an insert key in Windows when I'm using parallels. And then ChatGPT or Claude will both come back to you and say, here's what you should do. You should add these macros and use these terminal line commands to be able to run that Keyboard Maestro. And then what you do is you set it so whenever Parallels is active, it runs that first one and then the second one runs when Parallels is in the background. And it sounds a little complicated, especially when you go through and do it that way. But the reason I recommend using ChatGPT to generate that again is because it gets you familiar with navigating keyboard maestro. What ChatGPT or Claude typically will not tell you is that you should go in and create a macro group for your Windows Parallels. It'll just tell you add these macros to all your all macros. And I prefer to have a macro group in case something doesn't work properly. You can just go disable that entire macro group and then those macros in Keyboard Maestro will not run. Also, if you want, just drop us an email feedback at Unmute show and I'd be delighted to get you those macros as well. I shared them with Damasi. I think he's imported them and they should work for you just fine too. Hope that helps you Jane a little bit. Any other hands, Marcy?

We're clear. Okay, so I'm going to pip on Marty for a minute and ask Marty, Marty, if I was a brand new iPhone user and we all know that some of us have been there, some of us have not. How do you. And I think this should be a challenge question for a lot of the accessibility tech teachers. How do you teach someone to swipe? What is a swipe? A swipe would be putting your finger onto the glass and sliding it either to the right or to the left.

In a fluid motion. Right? You can't just slide it across, because if you just slide it across, then you're going to use Explore by Touch and find an app. So you need to actually swipe. I describe it to people like you're flicking something off of your screen. So you take a finger and you slide it fluidly across your screen in a Solid motion. Because that was a question that came up on a show that I was on yesterday, and hopefully we described it. Fine.

People, though, use the flick, though, because there's also the flick. So you could swipe right and then flick up on something or down on something. So you gotta be careful that you're not telling someone to flick to the right when you want them to swipe. So. But are you flicking up or are you swiping up? Because I've seen it in documentation. Swipe to the right or left to go to the next or previous item and swipe up or down to trigger the action.

Correct. But someone who's new to it will not get right away the difference in the flick or a swipe because they kind of think it's the same. But is there a difference? I don't think there's a difference between the two words.

Yeah, I think they're just differently. Like, I think they're used interchangeably, unfortunately, because I've seen it flick to the right or swipe to the right. And that adds an element of confusion to a new mobile user. Michael, how do you explain. And then I do. See, we have a hand.

So the way I explain it is I use them both the same. You know, you can flick or swipe that does the same gesture. Even visually, like whenever I'm. You know, when you're flicking and swiping, you're doing the same thing. And both when you're using your vision, swiping and flicking can do the same thing. Just depends on how much of a. When you're using vision, swiping, more in one direction will go faster and flicking the same way. So it really is about the same. They're just synonyms of the same concept.

Right. But here's like, another thing I run into with people all the time. They say, so if I want to get out of an app, do I flick up or do I swipe up? Or what if I want to go up to the app switcher, do I flick up or swipe up twice? Same thing.

Yeah, it's the same thing. And it kind of goes back to, you know, on the same screen. You can click if you have a mouse or tap. They're technically the same gesture, but they also are used interchangeably, even though one's with a finger and one's with a mouse. But like on an iPad, I could be using a mouse to click, even though it's a tap gesture. So a lot of the same things. You're doing the same things just with different words. You can use a mouse with ipados.

I did not know that you can on iPhone too. Huh. Okay. Interesting. Marcy, I see we have a hand. Leslie, please. My mind is broken. Hello, Leslie. Hi. Are you able to hear me? We are. We can hear you. Okay, cool. So I've switched over to Windows 11 and one of the things that I do a lot is convert PDFs over. To over to Word.

And it seems like when I've switched over to Windows 11, there's no real easy way to do that because I used to be able to just hit my applications key, hit H to open with arrow down, just use my arrow keys. And Windows 11 is not letting me do that. So any hints, Liz?

Any hints on this? I think I laughed because I think you asked me about this question. I don't think you can use that H key stroke anymore, but you can down arrow to open with. You may need to down arrow 150 times, but you can't use that first letter navigation anymore. There are a lot of scenarios that I have encountered in menus within Windows 11 where jaws will read the fact that there is a key tip, but you. You can't really use it. So that is also my frustration.

So I can go to open with, but then after that I'm kind of lost. So use your up and down arrows then to choose an item that should work.

Doesn't seem to have give me the choices, I guess. So like, like it doesn't give me. Okay, it. It in Windows 10 it gives you a list and then it says more apps. And then eventually you'll be able to arrow down the word, but you can't do that in Windows 11. And so I don't know. I don't know what to do. And I need to. I do this all the time, like on a regular basis. I'm looking into it at the moment. So stay tuned.

So Liz is looking into it. So yes, stay tuned. It can be done. Are you a Jaws user by chance? Yes. You are. That's right. You did say you're a Jaws user. So while Liz is looking into it, which is probably the same thing that I was getting ready to do as well, if for some reason this doesn't work, what I do. Yeah, you have to download like seven times and then. Huh. That is interesting. It does not show you Word. So the element that you're looking for should be the last thing on that open with. So when you hear open with, if you hit Enter, then if you don't see Microsoft Word, you can up arrow To. I see. Choose another app and if you hit Enter on that, then you can go in and find Microsoft Word. But you saying that you're not seeing choose another app or you're not seeing Word in another app window?

Yeah, I mean, I haven't been able to successfully open any. Anything in a PDF in Microsoft Word at all. Gotcha. I can't think of where I got stopped, but yeah, I think it is where I just can't. I don't find words. So I'm trying to make this a little bit easier. I'm not sure what Windows 11 did to make this harder, but I do this all the time on Windows 10. It's frustrating.

It is very frustrating. Couple of things. Number one, it's not the answer you want to hear, but I recommend reaching out to the disability answer desk and giving them this feedback because they're not going to be able to fix it unless they hear from people who are having struggles like this. Another solution that you can do, which I'm going through that and Liz may have something else too, but I'm going through that process right now and it is very convoluted, is to go to open in Microsoft Word and open the PDF from there. Have you tried that?

You mean pressing Applications key and is there a choice that just. No, I mean opening Microsoft Word, pressing Control O to open a file and then finding the PDF. That's way. Yeah, that does work. That might, that might be. It's just a little bit more. You know, I like. I know but I mean, I'm. We.

We may be forced to do that. But yeah, I'm just, I'm just frustrated because it, it's so easy in, in Windows 10 and they're gonna, they're no longer going to be supporting it in. In October 25th. So my work is going to go over to 11 and I do it more at work than I do here. So I got to figure out a way before or they don't support it. The other question. Oh, go ahead, Liz. Do you want it to always open your PDFs in word? No, not necessarily. Okay, well, then there goes that.

That was going to be. My other solution was to go set. The PDF, which was also convoluted. But. But absolutely. I just tried it now and I definitely. In pressing Enter on Open with submenu, I am able to use my up and down arrows and the choose another app option is showing. And then if you press Enter on that, then you'll tap your down arrow key several times probably until you find Microsoft Word and then hit Enter. Yes. Although Word, admittedly is showing in my first menu.

That might be the issue because I think when I hit choose another app, I don't find Word. And so that could be. That. That could be my problem in that dialogue there. And I could pull it up and verify this. But there may be a way to. It may not be giving you the whole list for some reason. There may be a way to expand that. Let me take a look at that really quickly. Okay. And just out of a quick curiosity, and this might seem like a silly question, but you do have Word installed, right?

Oh, definitely. Okay. Okay. Because you said you upgraded, so I wasn't sure because that would explain why it wouldn't show up. Right, right, exactly. I've got Microsoft 365, I've got Teams, I've got everything. Excel on everything, for sure.

Well, hopefully Leslie Liz can come back and give you some possible other suggestions related to it expanding or not. I. I think this is a conversation to definitely have with the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk in order to let them know that this is a frustration, because unless they're not aware of it, they can't fix it. If that makes sense. I am back with more information. Okay.

So in activating the option to choose an app, if you press your tab key several times, if the app is not in the list box that focus automatically goes to, you can press tab multiple times. The option that you want is the choose an app on your PC link, and if you enter on that, press enter on that and then you're put into an open dialog. And then if you shift tab several times, you are presented with all of the apps it looks like on your PC and can choose which app you would like to open it with an up or down arrow. Arrow.

Okay. And then an enter. It's just frustrating because Windows 10 just automatically gives you that list without having to do gymnastics. Yep. Yeah, that's. It may depend on how often you use a program. I don't know how that those end up in that list, honestly, but. Okay. All right. Thank you. No worries. Leslie, thanks a lot for your question. We definitely appreciate it. This is me. Yes, we can, Chris.

Oh, awesome. Excellent. I would try to fiddle around and make sure. I wanted to suggest that sometimes I use Scan to Word with Jaws, and so that's available to me. I'm still running Windows 10 on one of my machines, but I'm imagining you could get to it by doing the equivalent of the context menu and scan toward Jaws. Should be one of the Options and then it will perform OCR on the PDF and open Word at the same time.

I forgot about that. So you can also do JAWS key space of and that will OCR the file. And then at the very bottom of that virtual viewer page will be a link that says open in Word. I thought it also opened Word automatically if you alt tap, you know, to it. I thought it also opened Word, but yeah, maybe not, but that might be easier.

Perfect. Yeah, it is frustrating and I can totally relate to the frustration of things not working the way that they did, especially when it takes a heck of a lot more steps in order to make that work for you. So definitely, hopefully some of those tips will be helpful for you. You, Marcy, I'm not seeing any hands. Is that correct? You are correct. We are clear. Awesome. Well, not awesome because we definitely want people's feedback and input. Oh wait, can I add something? Sorry, yes.

I wanted to add something to the earlier question about dictation and when you're in a text box. Just a couple things to clarify. You can do a two finger double tap to start dictation and a two finger double tap to stop. So in theory there is no need to find that dictate button at the bottom right corner of the keyboard. It will make a little ding and then you can talk. And when you're done talking, do the two finger double tap again and it would go ding and then you're not being listened to anymore for the dictation for sure.

Yeah, yeah. And always having to open each edit box, swiping or flicking, whichever they are the same to me. Swiping or flicking to the next edit box, double tapping to open it. Because that's how you open an edit box and then doing the two finger double tap to start and stop dictation. I never dictate email addresses. Never ever. Because it might write the word at instead of, you know, the at sign.

So yeah, that's funny. That's what I tell people in the blind show. The two things you can't slash shouldn't dictate are your wifi password and email addresses.

So, Chris, here is a question I have for you to combat. So a lot of times when it comes to dictating, I've told people to use the microphone by a single finger double click on the bottom right corner. Because there's a lot of times when a two finger double tap will activate other things. Audio, like music or a podcast or something like that or. So how do you combat that situation?

Usually if the edit box is Open. It usually doesn't do that, but you could go and close any apps that might be music related. Sometimes things are kind of stuck in the bucket, but it doesn't come up so often for me that I don't tell people to do it. As long as you are focused on the edit box, it should automatically turn on dictation or things like that.

It's context aware and I have seen what Marty's talking about that happen a couple of times if it does become an issue. What I found to be the quickest way is to take one finger touch the status bar, two finger double tap that will stop any media, then touch the edit field or put your touch the keyboard at the bott anywhere in that edit field and it'll move your focus back there and then you can two finger double tap and dictation should work as expected.

And Michael, I wanted to go ahead and throw a question your way because I figured a lot of folks in our community would want to know this. You've started using bluesky because I know that's kind of the big talk. Do you want to mention that, like what your experience has been since a lot of people are starting to move that way? Well, darn it, that was the question I was going to ask you. Yes. So for those who don't know a lot of people back in when did Elon buy x22 or 23? One of those years.

Yeah, yeah. What does time mean anymore? So Elon Musk bought X, formerly Twitter and when that occurred there was a lot of concern that people weren't going to have as good of an experience on the X platform as what they might have had prior to that happening. Especially with his dropping support of APIs applicational programming interfaces for third party apps to work with the X platform. So a lot of people, A lot of blind people I should say not a lot of people, but a lot of blind people. And there's a clear distinguisher between those left X and went over to Mastodon and you may have heard of Mastodon and Mastodon can be kind of a convoluted, complicated process to get that up. The problem with Mastodon is that sometimes you can find yourself stuck in your own little silo of group of individuals who you're talking to the same people all day long and you're not getting out of there and growing. I told everyone I was not going to go sign up for another social network and anyone who's followed me in the past 20 years knows that's a lie. He's Going to get there eventually. So I went and signed up probably two months ago to Blue sky and my Michael, who's running Blue Sky, I.

Don'T know if you know, I know originally it was one of the older CEOs of Twitter that kind of came up with the idea of coming up with this. But I'm not sure who the current owner. Isn't it Kevin Tristram, who started Instagram? I think it was several folks, one. Of them, but I think he's behind Blue Sky. I think.

Think so. Blue sky launched probably a year ago or so. And there for a long time you had to get an invitation from someone who was already on the platform in order to join it. So Michael sent me an invitation, I threw it in the trash and said, I ain't doing anything with that, like a crotchety old man. And then when it opened up to be public, I still was a crotchety old man and said, I ain't doing that at all. But as I said, about a month and a half, two months ago, I went over to BSKY App. Bsky App you can also get there. We learned today by going to BSky Social. And I set up an account. I Put my username PayOne P A Y O W in and then my web, my bluesky URL became PayOne BSky app or Social. Either one works. And what you can do is treat it like Twitter used to be treated. I think is the best way to explain it. You go in there, you follow. Hello, people. Those people are added to your home feed that you get in your home feed. You can see their updates that they post. And I use a third party app called Skeets SK E E T S and that allows you on the iPhone, to go over there and find the posters and the people that are posting there and you can read all their posts. You can flick up or flick down to take action on that specific. Um, there's something else and Michael, maybe you understand this a little more called feeds. And I, I thought you could add RSS feeds to bluesky. Is that what that is?

No, that is the feeds are a little really cool actually. Feeds are algorithms. They are the algorithms of BlueSky. So people can programmatically create a feed in JavaScript or other languages, I believe, and they tailor your or your experience based on the algorithm. Like, there's a feed called Mutuals, and so it only shows posts from people that follow you and that you follow. There's a computer programming feed that looks through Blue sky at posts that mention, like software development there's movies and TV feeds that specifically look for content related to those areas. So it's a really cool algorithmic way to find content based on interest.

I do see we have a hand and we'll get there here in a quick second. Appreciate your patience, but that looks like. So, so it's. It's lists, but on steroids then. Cause you don't have to build it out.

You don't build it out and, and you could create your own feeds, but a lot of people have already created feeds. And so instead of being a list of. There are lists as well, and there are things called starter packs. So when you join, you can look, you can find people that you know and see what groups of people they recommend that you follow when you start out on Blue Sky.

So Bluesky Bsky app, if you're interested. The SK is the name of the app that makes it super easy to navigate that with voiceover and Marcy, who's the hand? We have Judy, please. Hello, Judy.

Hello there. My question is concerning the Outlook email client. I'm running an older version which was. Never, never had any annoyances until I updated to jaws 2025. And now there's just all kinds of nonsense that's going on. So one of the things that. So if I, for example, if I wanted to send you guys an email, if I just hit you, it would auto populate to your email address. Now if I type the first letter of something, all kinds of other email addresses auto populate that. Don't.

Don't start with that letter. So that is confusing. But the other thing.

Thing was that in the, in the inbox, every single message would say attachment. Every single one. So what I did was I went into the Dictionary Manager and I basically just, you know, I typed in attachment and I hit the space bar. So now it says blank. So it's not a problem, but it's annoying because it just, it'll. It sounds as if there's like a blank space in between each message. So I don't know. And you have to put something there. So like I said, I just hit the space bar. So do you have any thoughts about either one of those situations? Because it's just, you know, it's just annoying. Yeah, thanks.

Yeah, don't put a space there and tab to sound and pick a very unobtrusive sound and use that as your dictionary replacement. Like a little click or pop and then you'll hear, instead of space there, you'll just hear that click or pop. And then that would be what would show up there for the word attachment? Oh, so how do you. Does it give you. I've never done a sound, so does it give you a choice of sounds? It does, Yep.

There's a list of like 79 different sounds, unfortunately. Hope you're listening to this. Freedom Scientific. Unfortunately, you have to hit enter on the sound and then tab to the play button to play it. You can't play it right there within that dialogue. Freedom Scientific. So how do I fix what I did? How do I take away that? Do I have to just redo? Yeah. Tell me what to do.

Go back into. So two things. Number one, if you want to hear how I set this up, go to unmute, show and type in dictionary. And I walk you through doing this in audio so you can hear what that process actually sounds like with Jaws. But what you do is you go find the dictionary entry that you created. I'm sure others know the keystroke, but I'm going to tell you tab to edit and hit enter or space and then go delete the space. So you're going to be back in that original dictionary entry where you'll see attachment in the first edit field. And then when you tab you'll get to the space, delete that space and then tab again and you'll find sounds button. I think it says sounds dot, dot, dot button space on that. And then use the up and down arrow keys to find a sound. In this case, I'd probably use the one of the clicks. There's five different click sounds in there. I'd probably use click three or four and that would be pretty quick. Hit enter on one of those and then it'll say clicks, dot, click sound, dot, dot, dot button, I believe tab once from there and you'll hear a play button. If you hit space, it'll play that sound. If you don't like it, shift tab to the button, hit space and then down arrow to the next one.

Okay, because I kind of remember that you had gone through something similar with that you wanted to get rid of something that it was saying all the time. That was missed call from caller plus one is what I needed to change. Thanks. Any thoughts about why it's doing what it's doing as far as like the auto populate that it'll give me every other person except for what I'm looking for. I don't. Yeah.

No. All right, so. Okay. All right, Judy, thanks a lot and appreciate hearing your voice. Definitely appreciate that. We have about eight minutes, you guys. Thank you. I was going to Ask. We'll do one more quick question, see if anyone else has any questions or if anyone else has any comments slash feedback they want to provide. And I mean anyone. Chris, Marty, Michael, Liz, any of you, anything. Otherwise we can wrap it up. Or anyone listening as well. Adrian, please.

Adrian. Hello. What up, Michael? What up, peoples? Hey, Adrian. How you doing? Chilling, chilling. Quick question. Did they officially get rid of the Facebook mobile page? Yes. Okay. Okay. Yep. It's my understanding they officially dropped support for the Facebook mobile page. I am curious, have you used facebook.com from your blog? Yes. None of it comes up on the Blind shell anymore. On the Classic two. Okay.

I'm like, man, I'm like, okay, you know what I'm saying? I'm so used to the mobile page, especially on the computer with Jaws. I prefer that page compared to the main Facebook. But look like I'm just gonna have to learn that joint. But it's all good. But yeah, I just wanted to check and see, you know. You know. Yep. Can't hurt to check and see for sure. Well, thank you, Adrian. Thanks a lot. All right, y'all. Peace.

For those who don't know, that's one of the voices behind the shell phone show. So if you want to hear more of Adrian, he has sent me some content that I need to get published. Looks like we have another hand. Yeah, Rich. Hey, Rich. Yeah, Rich. He's a blind show user. Real quick on Adrian's question, on the Blind Shell Classic 3, you can do Facebook Lite. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. That's an app you have to install from the additional apps from the visual app. Correct.

So, yes, but on the Classic too. I don't think there's any way to post or totally navigate Facebook anymore. Yep. That's unfortunate. But that's why I bought the three. Yeah. To use Facebook to buy the three. But hey, while we have you here, Rich, real quick, because you're one of the couple of people I know that has that phone. Before we wrap it up in the next couple of minutes, are your thoughts. Slash, should everyone go buy a classic 3? Well, it depends what you, how you use it. I think if you're just going to use it the same way you're using the two and not use those additional features, I, I, I stick with the two or buy the two.

Okay.

But if you're going to use those additional features like the three way calling and the tandem and, you know, and the, and the third party apps and so forth, if you're going to use those a bunch, then I'd go with. Copy that. That makes sense. Have you used the Tandem with an iPhone user by chance? I one time just to see if it connected and it did. Okay. Okay. I'm wondering about the accessibility of the tandem app on iOS. I have not played with had a chance to play with that so appreciate it. Thank you very much, Rich. Thanks a lot. Okay, on. On that note, Marty, you want to wrap it up and thank everyone for joining us. Yep, yep.

Thanks everyone for being here. We appreciate it. And we want to make sure that we thank Bell and Marcy for helping us out today and Michael D. And Liz and Chris for all being here and helping us out. If you guys have any questions you can email us at Feedback Mute show and for everything we got going on, you can check our website at Unmute show and everyone have a great rest of the weekend and we'll see you next time.