Jonathan Mosen

What can you do with it? Listeners share their perspectives on the pros and cons of iOS versus Android, and several relatively new apps that might add value to your daily computing experience.

It's Jonathan Mosen at the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, welcoming you to episode 96 of the podcast.

First today, as we've covered on previous episodes of Access On, we are aware of the increasing smart glasses backlash, the call for banning smart glasses, and the increasing use of pejorative rhetoric to describe the glasses and the people who wear them.

Equally, there is increasing concern about the way that smart glasses are being portrayed as some sort of miracle cure or necessity for blind people, so it's a complicated issue.

And so when you encounter these exclusions in public places or discussions about what the limits should be, I would invite you to explain what the access needs are and listen to the privacy concerns, but bring that discussion back to the right of blind people to live in the world, to travel, to work, to learn alongside everybody else, and to participate fully and make that a part of the public conversation.

But we do want you to coordinate.

And so as you come across incidents of exclusion, if you have challenges that have come up specifically in your community, unequal treatment, harmful treatment, related media stories on this, please send those examples to Jonathan Mosen, our Executive Director for Accessibility Excellence, at jmosen@nfb.org. Jonathan is helping to lead our coordination efforts on gathering intelligence about what is happening on this topic.

Also, as you learn about proposals that are being offered at the local level or state level, I strongly encourage you to bring that information, those proposals, to our chapters and affiliates so that blind people can make the decision about what the Federation's practices and policies should be on the standards that are being discussed.

He ended by encouraging us not to lose hope, since all of the great fights to advance human and civil rights throughout our nation's 250-year history were won by people just like us who gathered in spaces just like our convention.

Jonathan Mosen followed with a technology report.

His updates and thoughts are well worth reprinting, and so we will do so in a future issue.

The final agenda item of the morning, and this year of all the general sessions, was the presentation of the 19th Annual Dr. Jacob Lodden Awards.

This week's episode is devoted to a deep dive into the new features of iOS 27.

It's Jonathan Mosen at the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, welcoming you to episode 95 of Access On.

We have a lot of things to tell you about iOS 27 today.

And of course, some of those features make their way to other Apple operating systems too.

How do we as blind people use this technology ethically so that we can find out who is in a room? Especially at something like our national convention, where you can have close to 3,000 blind people all over the place.

Jonathan Mosen is the NFB's Executive Director for Accessibility Excellence and an enthusiastic user of AI and smart glasses.

He says he's concerned about privacy issues, but wants blind people to know as much as possible about the world around them and the choices that requires.

And if we opt into the collection of that data because we want to build robust AI tools that can help a blind person, it's a conscious act.

His project allows blind users to view and create their own graphics on the dot pad Braille display.

These newly empowered blind creators, along with smart glasses fans, say their concerns are both the same and different for most who encounter it.

Jonathan Mosen of the NFB says AI technology in general brings problems that are specific to people with disabilities.

Consider someone applying for a job.

How do we as blind people use this technology ethically so that we can find out who is in a room? Especially at something like our national convention, where you can have close to 3,000 blind people all over the place.

Jonathan Mosen is the NFB's Executive Director for Accessibility Excellence and an enthusiastic user of AI and smart glasses.

He says he's concerned about privacy issues, but wants blind people to know as much as possible about the world around them and the choices that requires.

And if we opt...

His project allows blind users to view and create their own graphics on the dot pad Braille display.

These newly empowered blind creators, along with smart glasses fans, say their concerns are both the same and different for most who encounter it.

Jonathan Mosen of the NFB says AI technology in general brings problems that are specific to people with disabilities.

Consider someone applying for a job.

And there's an overview of our accessibility excellence initiatives here at the National Federation of the Blind.

It's Jonathan Mosen at the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, welcoming you to episode 94 of the podcast.

And before we take you back for the final time this year, at least, to Austin, Texas, a couple of quick notes.

First, if you are listening to this on a new shiny Apple thing, I hope that that is working out well for you.

We've had a lot of talk about technology, the work that we're doing to provide leadership on technology and innovation and to bring users more into the center of what's happening at the major tech companies, the startups across the world.

We want to be not just the consumers, but innovators and leaders.

Here for a brief report is our Executive Director for Accessibility Excellence, Jonathan Mosen.

I am

And the thing is, I actually heard about it through a podcast called...

Access on hosted by Jonathan Mosen and I read the transcript and I heard about you know lumen and I was like, oh man I don't you want to try it but like then I was like now I'll wait till it comes out and then I saw it on the App Store and I jumped on it and Your voice came on and did the intro greeting and I did not notice it until I downloaded it and you Instructed me how to set it up and it instructed, you know with you recorded I guess and so before we get into the demo I What is the advantage of using this over say other apps that you currently have like Gmail and other mail apps, and then you can jump straight into the demo and let us hear what it does.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think just to take a little bit of a step back, I think in the accessibility world, we're all used to using screen readers and other products.

And we return to the vendor showcase from our twenty twenty-six National Convention in Austin, Texas.

It's Jonathan Mosen of the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, welcoming you to episode ninety-three of Access On.

And we're going to begin with some comments from President Mark Riccobono of the National Federation of the Blind, delivered as part of the presidential release live.

You can find this on our YouTube channel, and I highly encourage you to check it all out because there's so much interesting information there about all of the programs of the National Federation of the Blind and some of the things that are focusing our attention at the moment.

It helps us also when we talk to the media because, of course, um, the media loves to put its spin on these issues for a variety of reasons that aren't always complementary to what we want as blind people in terms of full access.

So it's really important that members share these experiences.

You can do that by sending those details to, uh, Jonathan Mosen, who's our executive director for Accessibility Excellence, email JMOSEN@nfb.org. Also, if you learn about policy efforts in states or local municipalities on this effort, this is a great opportunity to engage the local chapter and affiliate and coordinate with our national office to consider how we respond to these things.

National Federation of the Blind President, Mark Riccobono.