Digital Bytes: Tapping Into Accessibility & Travel Tech Tips - podcast episode cover

Digital Bytes: Tapping Into Accessibility & Travel Tech Tips

Jun 15, 202514 min
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Episode description

In this episode, we start with a quick VoiceOver tip for iOS Notes. Sometimes, double-tapping a link in Notes doesn’t open it as expected. Chris walks through how a double-tap and hold will bring up options to open links or trigger Safari directly when using VoiceOver on your iPhone. Then, Michael and Marty dive into a set of summer travel tips:

  • Wi-Fi Safety on the Go: Avoid public Wi-Fi when possible. Use your mobile data plan or consider purchasing extra data for travel. A VPN is also a good option to keep your data encrypted and secure from snoopers on public networks.

  • Password Managers: Using a password manager adds another layer of protection when accessing sensitive sites. If a phishing attempt tries to fool you with a lookalike website, your password manager won’t autofill if the URL doesn’t match exactly.

  • Apple Passwords App: iCloud Keychain is now available in a standalone app called Passwords across Apple devices, offering easy and VoiceOver-accessible password management.

Next, the conversation shifts to Aira and how it can be a huge asset while traveling:

  • Aira offers free access at many airports, hotels, and public venues.
  • Michael shares his personal experiences using Aira to navigate airports, hotels, and even find food during long layovers.
  • Aira agents have access to indoor maps at some locations, making navigation much easier for blind travelers.
  • Additional options like the Intuit Small Business Plan can provide extra free Aira minutes for eligible users.

Whether you're flying for business, attending a convention, or just taking a summer vacation, these tips will help you stay connected, safe, and independent. For more info on Aira access locations: aira.io/our-partners As always, visit unmute.show for updates and more content, or send your questions and feedback to feedback@unmute.show. You can also subscribe to Digital Bytes as a standalone podcast anywhere you get your podcasts. If you want, I can also prep your SEO-friendly description version if you're using this for your podcast upload or YouTube. Shall I?

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Read transcript

Transcript

Hey everybody, this is Chris, back with a digital bite on how to click a link in your Notes app. You might think that's a no brainer because anything that I want to click, I usually just double tap. Well, for some reason that doesn't work even though the link was properly inserted in the note. So here's what I did. I was on my Mac preparing a presentation and doing a practice session so that I could demonstrate how to link text on my Mac. So I created a note and I went to the Apple Viz website and I found the guides and tutorial section. Getting started with your first Mac, for instance. And then I went to my toolbar, copied the link, pasted it in the note and voila, we have a nice note about how to get started with your first Mac. So then I thought, well, I'll just go to the Notes app on my iPhone and when I did that, I heard that I have a link and I will demonstrate that for you.

June 12, 2025 Note text field is editing. Getting started with your first Mac and voiceover. Here's a great getting started site link word mode. Okay, so you hear the title Getting started with voiceover and your first Mac and here's a great website link. So I was thinking I'll just double tap on where it says that text Getting started website link. So here closing single quote. A great getting start site link. Okay, so you hear site is a link piece of text.

So I'll double tap insertion point at start. Oh dear. It didn't go anywhere. Bummer. Okay, so we will go down to that piece of text that is a link lines. Getting started with your title first Mac and voiceover. Okay, so that's my title words gonna go to words here. Closing single quotation mark as body. A great getting link sign blue getting link. So getting started link started. Site link site.

Okay, so those are all words involved in text that is linked. So now what I did next was I double tap and hold and I have choices. Safari page menu button.

Wait, there it is. Okay, so you can either get choices on what to do about that link or it will actually open the link for you. I've had mixed results. So double tap and hold maybe it depends on how long you hold. I'm now on the Apple Viz website with the nice getting started guide. So the reader's digest version here, so to speak, is that you want to double tap and hold on a link in Notes to either get choices on what to do with that or linked text or you can directly open it with the double Tap and hold. So hope this is helpful. Now you can access links that are created in your notes.

Hey, all. Marty here. And today we're going to do something a little bit different. I actually have Michael Babcock with me today. How's it going, Michael? It's. It's weird. I. I don't know, man. This is weird. Just doing this whole podcasting thing together. It's like we've never done it before. It's going. Marty. And does it totally throw your game off? No comment.

Yeah. Well, we wanted to come at you with a couple travel tips because it's summertime and it's travel time and people are getting out and doing things like vacationing with your family and going to convention and whatever else you may be doing. So the first topic we want to kick off with is traveling and WI Fi safety. So a couple suggestions here. First, what I would suggest is when you are traveling, when you're in a public place like a hotel, an airport, or maybe a coffee shop, you want to definitely use your data and not the public WI fi, if that's possible. And if you're somebody that does not have a lot of data on your plan, I would check with your carrier and find out, can you get a little bit more data for a month or for a few weeks? Or maybe they have a package that you can buy just a little bit more data to add to your plan for the short time while you're traveling? Typically, they do. You just got to contact them and find out what they have to offer. So also, we want to let you know that VPNs are great. If you can get a VPN that works for your device, whether it's Android or whether it's iPhone or whatever you're using, that's also great. That encrypts your data and it makes it so that other people who want to snoop on everybody on public WI fi is not able to do that. You know, it will encrypt all your data and it'll make it so that they can't do any mischievous things to your device, computer, phone, whatever that is. You have anything else, Michael, on WI Fi you want to talk about?

No, I would just say, you know, with that, with that vpn, it'll just give them a blob of gibberish is the best way to describe it, instead of actually all of your information. And definitely, I guess I do have one other thing. Hopefully you're using a password manager, because I have heard of people impersonating sites like Gmail or Facebook or your bank maybe, and they'll impersonate it, thinking that you'll enter your password and then they'll have access to your details. If you're utilizing a password manager and the URL is not an exact match, which means the webpage that you're on is not an exact match for what your password manager is expecting, it's not going to fill it in for you. At that point, when your password manager isn't working, take a look, just to be safe and see what's going on. Why is this not working? Hit Control L if on Windows. That'll take you to the location URL bar and Command L if on the Mac, and then read character by character, because it could just be off by one character. And your password manager picks up on that for you.

And there is now a passwords app, which is actually called Passwords, which is a very original name on your Apple devices. So if you're signed into icloud, it will sync all of your passwords across all your devices. So that would be probably a pretty good place to start. And it does work with voiceover. So that is a good option if you're on the Apple platform for sure. So if you are a developer, Blob of Gibberish could be a great thing to call your VPN app. So. There you go. Blob of gibberish.

Yeah. So the next thing we wanted to talk about was Aira. And Aira is amazing in so many ways. We all use it for different things, but it's great for traveling. You can use it in hotels, airports, and there's a lot of places that it's free, certain coffee shops and things like that. So Michael will drop a link in the show Notes that will take you to a page that will show you all the places that you can utilize aira for free. So with that being said, Michael, you want to do a little quick rundown of Aira, and then let's talk about the experience that you had in an airport last summer when you were traveling.

Yeah. So Aira, you can go to aira IO our Dash partners. And as Marty said, I'll drop that in the show notes when this episode goes live and get a list of all of the partners that Aira has connected with. There are several airports, not all of them, but several airports out there that have. That are Aira access points, which means that once your phone determines that you are at that airport, you can use aira for free. So typically, what I do is when I land, I'll open aira just to find out if the airport I've arrived at is an AIRA access point. And if it is, then I'll take advantage of that offer and I'll call an agent up when we start to debark from the plane. And I then am able to use AIRA to. To guide me off the plane and into the airport. What's really cool about AIRA is they offer a map of most airports to their agents, which means if you know which gate you're coming in on, and typically you do, you can say, hey, I'm coming in on Gate C4, and I need to go to Gate F26. Then, as you're disembarking from the plane, the agent can be mapping out where it is that you need to go once you get off of that plane. And what happened last summer was I was able to, without having to wait for someone to ask, that I sit in a wheelchair and wheel me over to the next gate, get off of the plane. I had stuff in my hand and I had my phone in my other hand, and I was walking with the assistance of aira. And now you can use your meta Ray bans, which is even better, because then you have a free hand for other things as well. But I was able to use AIRA to guide me to my next gate, and I didn't have to worry about any delays or wait for anyone to meet me there or cause any issues. And then Ira, when I got to where I was headed in Seattle, I think it was in October, Ira was able to just guide me straight down to the place where we went to get Uber. I had ordered an Uber, told them what color it was. They looked around when they saw that Uber, they led me over to it, was able to just jump in the back, make sure they were for Michael, and then we went off to the hotel. Granted, I did put in the wrong hotel, but that's a totally different story. That was a $30 mistake. Anyways, so that is my experience with AIRA in airports. Have you used it in an airport yet, Marty?

I have not used it in an airport yet, but I'm going to be traveling this summer as well. So I want to give it a try. I want to definitely make sure that it will be free so that I don't have to necessarily worry about running out of time, because I think if you want to try and navigate around, you can't really do that in just five minutes. So otherwise, maybe I'll buy a bucket of minutes or something, and I will Try it. We'll see how it goes.

One of the cool things about it is sometimes when you have a delay in your flight or you have a layover, you might get hungry. Imagine that. You might want to go find some food. So I was traveling to Washington D.C. in March and our layover turned into an eight and a half hour layover. And about midway through I'm like, I really want some food. And that barbecue smells good wherever it is. So I, I just opened up aira. They were. It was not an access point, but I was able to use my own minutes for it. And we navigated to a barbecue restaurant in the airport. They guided me through the line and I was able to order what I wanted. I did ask them to look up the menu and start reading some things to me while we were navigating where we were going. So that was pretty handy because it's like having your own personal assistant giving you information in your ear prior to you getting to where you were going.

Yeah, it's definitely awesome. And I will say one other thing. You know, this past March, you and I were at CSUN together and there was a couple things that I used Ira for which I didn't even know about until I actually gave it a try. And that was navigating around that hotel. That hotel is huge. And you and I were going somewhere, I don't remember where, but I pulled up AIRA and not only were they able to locate exactly where I was, but they were able to locate exactly where I was in the hotel. And they were able to pull up a map of the interior of the hotel and guide us directly to where we needed to go. Which kind of blew my mind. I thought they really have a map of the inside of the hotel. That was nuts to me. But they did.

Yep, it was great. So that is AIRA and definitely a tool to use. There are free services. You get 5. If you're a non paying customer, you get 5 minutes free every 48 hours. If you're a paying customer, you get 5 minutes FREE every 12 hours. Free maybe 36 hours or. Yeah, the free account may be 36 hours, but I do know paying customers get 5 minutes free every 12 hours. And then if you are at an AIRA access point, then you do get access to using those for free as well.

That is true. And also one other tip is if you are a small business owner like we are, then you can get on the Intuit small business plan and then you get a free 30 minutes and I think you get a total of five of those in a month. So that really helps out a lot as well. And that is AIRA not sponsoring Unmute, but if they're interested.

Oh definitely. Anyway, thanks so much everyone, as usual. And Michael, thanks for being here and doing a little bit of a different Digital Bites today. And if you want to see what we have going on, you can always check out our website at Unmute show and there are updates that will be coming, so stay tuned to the website. If you have questions, comments or anything else, you can always reach us at Feedback Mute Show. And also, if you really like Digital Bites and you want to get it standalone, you can do that anywhere. You get your podcasts and have a good one and we'll see you next time.

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