Digital Bytes: Blood Donation Made Easy, Braille Navigation, and Backup Essentials - podcast episode cover

Digital Bytes: Blood Donation Made Easy, Braille Navigation, and Backup Essentials

Jan 12, 20259 min
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Episode description

Digital Bytes: Blood Donation Made Easy, Braille Navigation, and Backup Essentials

In this episode of Digital Bytes, we’re covering three accessible and practical topics that can make life a little easier and more efficient. Let’s dive in:

<h4>1. Blood Donation Made Easy with a Fully Accessible App</h4>

The Blood Donor app streamlines everything you need to give blood, from scheduling your appointment to completing the RapidPass questionnaire. Here’s what stands out:

  • Works seamlessly with VoiceOver on iPhone (and likely Android, too).
  • Helps you book appointments, find drives, and prepare without hassle.
  • Includes perks like donor rewards and even options to give back gift cards.

If you’ve thought about donating blood but weren’t sure where to start, this app makes the process simple and accessible.

<h4>2. Braille Navigation: Faster Ways to Find Apps on iOS</h4>

Using a Braille display with iOS? Here’s a quick way to locate and open apps without swiping endlessly:

  • Press Enter (chord E) to start a search from your home screen.
  • Type the first few letters of the app in computer Braille (not contracted Braille).
  • Use the routing key to open the app you want.

This trick lets you skip the hunt and get to what you need faster.

<h4>3. Backup Essentials: Portable External Hard Drives</h4>

Backing up your data doesn’t have to be a headache. I’ve been using the SanDisk 1TB portable external hard drive and here’s why I recommend it:

  • It’s small, lightweight, and uses USB-C for fast file transfers.
  • Perfect for travel or daily use, and it comes in 1TB or 2TB sizes.
  • Don’t forget to format it for your system (Mac or Windows) before use.

Pair this with a cloud backup for extra peace of mind and you’ll be ready for anything.

Thanks for listening! If this episode was helpful, share it with someone who could use these tips.

Links Mentioned

Stay tuned for more tips and reviews in the next Digital Bytes!

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Transcript

Foreign.

Hi everyone. I'm here to share with you an app that asks you to make a donation, but it's not a monetary donation, it is actually a blood donation. So if you're not too squeamish and you don't mind a needle and you have about an hour of time to spare, you can donate something that you make on a regular basis. Now, I am going to be chatting with you about the app, which I found highly accessible with voiceover on my iPhone. I have not yet tried it on my Android. So the app is really great. And the communication on the day of your appointment involves an email that they send you an email asking you to fill out this rapid pass, which is a questionnaire and you are filling this out. I believe it is online, but it's actually within the the Blood Donor app. And so you're filling out the questionnaire, answering questions pretty much about if you're at all a risk to passing anything on to anyone. And when you get done, there is a QR code that you can present that day of your donation. And I confirmed with the Be My Eyes app on my Android phone that it was indeed a QR code because I just wanted to make sure everything had worked out, which it had. When I got to the end of the questionnaire, I had a QR code to present to the donation drive in my local community. So when I set up the appointment, I could also do that through the app. You can look for local blood drives, you can find one that's nearest you, you can see the open times and you can book a time all through the app, which is really cool. Then they send you an email, of course, and then you do the rapid pass. So I just wanted to show you a few things that are in the app and so that if you'd like to use this, you certainly may. So I'm on the main screen where it has my Prof. And it has my name at the top and then it has a couple other bits of information and then we have blood type and I am the universal donor, capital O. So I'm an O negative. So generally I like to be positive, but my body in this case is negative. So I can donate to anyone.

Units donated five okay, so I've got. I've donated five units. Plan to do more. Critical need for blood donors. Blood ready to donate again blood donation near Oregon 97 okay, so it's going. To give my location and it's going to ask me if I want to book an appointment like the one I had before, which is at a particular location. Book another like this button, okay? And then it would open up the possibilities. 200 redeemable points. Hero for babies.

Okay, so I'm a hero for babies. I'm not tooting my own horn, but I. I happen to not have been exposed to a particular virus that's really common in the US and so apparently I can give blood to babies because of that. See rewards button. So I don't do this for the rewards, but they do offer some perks. I got a really nice T shirt. Schedule new appointment. Choose a time, location and donation type. Donor card your dig home.

So we've got the particulars about my donor card number and then it mentions the rewards. And also that I could, if I gave before a certain date, I could qualify for a chance to go to the Super Bowl. And they have, you know, different little perks like that. But they also send you an email afterwards in case you did have a little gift card that they gave you. And the really cool thing is that it's very easy to donate it back. And I wasn't interested in the gift card that they were offering, offering. So I could just, in the email that I got, the thank you email, I got a button in the email so that I could just donate that gift card right back to them. And so that process of booking the appointment, filling out the rapid pass, obviously showing the QR code to the person after I turned off voiceover, was my ticket to entry into the blood drive. And then I can just schedule my next appointment. And it's really great. So in case you would like to make that particular donation, the Blood Donor app is entirely accessible, and they also have a nice little survey that you can call and give them your feedback on your experience. And I do believe that I've done that in the past and said how accessible the app is. So in case you'd like to check that out, go ahead and do so. And. Or check out something similar in your country. And there is your app called Blood Donor.

If you have an iPhone either running iOS 17 or iOS 18, and you use a braille display, did you know that there's a quick way to locate and start an app on any of your home screens without having to swipe all over the place in order to get to it, here's how you do it. On your braille display, from any home screen, press Enter, which is Cord E or dots 15 on a braille keyboard, or just the Enter key. If you have a Braille display with a QWERTY keyboard in the input area that comes up either Braille or Type the first letter or two of the app you're looking for and then press Enter. The first match will appear on the display and if that app isn't the one that you're looking for, you can navigate up or down until you find the app that you want. Once you've found it, all you have to do is press a routing key anywhere above the app's name and the app will start. Now, if you didn't find what you're looking for and you want to start the search over again, press cord B as in bravo which is dots 12 space if you're on a Braille keyboard. Or you can press the escape key on a QWERTY keyboard. Now there's one very important thing to note if you are using a Braille keyboard to do this. Even if you normally use Grade two to enter all of your stuff, you have to type the letters of your search in computer Braille. Contractions will not work. So for example, if you looking for maybe the Stocks app, typing the ST symbol which is dots 34 will come up with a match not found message. You have to type the individual letters S and T. Thanks for listening and I hope that you found this tip useful.

I picked up this portable SanDisk one terabyte external hard drive. This drive is super small and lightweight. They do this by using the type of hard drive technology that looks like a a stick of ram. Actually, it's not a regular SATA drive. In a external case you connect it via USB C. So this makes it super fast. It does come with a USB C cable and the USB C port itself is right on the top of the drive. Easy to access. No big deal. This drive comes in two choices, one terabyte or two terabyte. Because it is so small you can put it anywhere. You can put it in your pocket even, but definitely you can go in any Go bag or any travel situation that you might need. It takes up hardly any space. It's super lightweight, super fast. I would say something to be cognizant of is once you get it and you open it up, you want to format it for whichever platform you you're going to use it on, whether that's Windows or Mac. You'll have to format it for the operating system that you want to use this drive with. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to back up your data, and definitely backing up your data in more than one place is a good thing. So physical on an external hard drive as well as doing cloud backups or any other redundant kind of backup, but just make sure that you're always backing your stuff up so that you don't lose it. If you're looking for an external portable hard drive, this would be a great option.

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