Andrew Leland's memoir "The Country of the Blind" tells a story about his ongoing journey into vision loss. It's also a kind of history of blindness, and blindness technology, with stops along the way to unpack the literary deployments of vision loss by other writers. He talked with me about the book, about the technology he uses, and some of his encounters with people made uncomfortable by low-vision.

Even before ChatGPT brought AI into the mainstream of collective consciousness, companies touted artificial intelligence as a way to make your web site accessible – a magic bullet that meant web devs could skip the accessibility checks normally done by humans. And technologies like computer vision had brought AI into devices and image software. Today's guest has a few bones to pick with what marketers call AI, and some good things to say about computer vision.

My colleagues from the Maccessibility Roundtable join me for a conversation about Apple's Vision Pro and accessibility. We still don't know a lot, but be know more than we did an hour after the WWDC keynote.

Taking a look back at this year's Google I/O events, with an eye toward accessibility. Our favorite followers of the Goog are back! We talk AI, Android, Pixel phones and tablets, and how Google does its spectacle.

This week, Apple previewed accessibility features coming to the Mac and iOS. It's an annual event, which even sat briefly atop TechMeme. Want to know more about what Apple discussed and how these new features fit in with the existing accessibility suite? We've got you!

iOS developer Rob Whitaker returns to Parallel for a chat about APIs and tools developers can use to make their mobile apps more accessible.

Starting or maintaining a fitness program is a challenge for anyone. If you have accessibility needs, you might experience barriers related to touchscreen devices, coaching that doesn't address a hearing or visual disability, or a need for accommodations related to physical limitations. With its Fitness+ service, Apple has taken on some of these issues, and opened up the program to many more people with disabilities, We'll talk with a Fitness+ user, and someone who has worked on Apple accessibility teams.

Ten iOSes ago, I wrote a book called iOS Access for All. Here's how it has evolved over the years.

AppleVis, an excellent community of blind and visually-impaired Apple users, surveyed its members to get their thoughts on how well Apple's platforms provide accessibility. We talk over the survey, and add some impressions of our own.

What if you could design the experience of listening to Web content in the same way you design the experience of seeing it? That's the premise of the CSS Speech Module, a retired W3C proposal that's now being championed by my guest. She knows a thing or two about CSS and the W3C, as a member of the standards group's board of directors. So is CSS the way to design spoken experiences, or is it a hindrance for screen reader users? Let's talk about it.

We're talking automation - mostly on macOS, with developer Brett Terpstra and fellow automation fan Darcy Burnard.

The W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines – WCAG – is the standard against which Web developers test for accessibility. Like most good standards, WCAG is evolving, with a new release anticipated within a few months. We talk about what the 2.2 candidate includes, and what's next for this important standard.

Parallel is back from summer break, and glad to be! We gather to review Apple's latest hardware announcements: do we like them, do we want them, are they accessible? Behold, the iPhones 14, Apple Watch Ultra (and otherwise), and AirPods Pro, 2nd gen.

We take a look at new accessibility features coming later this year to Apple platforms.

Creating products intended to serve the needs of people with disabilities requires all the hard work of any software project, along with special challenges for small, bootstrapped startups. We'll talk with a cofounder whose company builds mobile apps for people with vision loss and hearing impairments.

Whether we're motivated by a creative passion, the need for extra income or something else, taking on work outside the 9-to-5 comes naturally to a lot of people I know. So we're talking about what it means to juggle several "jobs."

Mily Mumford researches the impact of space travel on the mental health of astronauts, and how mixed reality could eventually be used to help them cope. That's a lot, but they're also a theater creator and filmmaker. We talk through the multitudes, including a conversation about ableism in the way we choose astronauts.

People with disabilities experience appallingly high rates of unemployment. But convincing an employer to interview disabled candidates is just the beginning. We talk about how people with all kinds of disabilities can get, keep and thrive in jobs.

Audio description gives people who are blind or visually impaired the information they need to fully enjoy TV, movies and even live events. We're focused mainly on TV, and how which streaming service you use and which platform you use it on, has a lot to do with whether you can get described content. My guest wrote the book on the current audio description landscape.

I, your humble host, sit for an interview about my career, my decision nine years ago to finally write about accessibility, and the book I wrote about Apple's iOS. We also talk about some accessibility problems in iOS 15.

Enjoying a theme park attraction or playing on a playground isn't always an option of you're a wheelchair user or if you're a kid in a hospital. But virtual reality offers all sorts of ways to make experiences accessible. I'll talk about that with someone who's done it.

Talking about gaming accessibility for a variety of users. We cover hardware, how gaming studios address accessibility, and what it's like to advocate for and write about it, too.

Lawrence Miller identifies as a cyborg. He, like a lot of us, has many identities. We talk about some of them, about art and about how augmenting one's body with technology is both a functional and a performative experience.

Christin Hemphill works with companies to build inclusive experiences for customers and employees. That's a fancy way of saying that your bank, your onboarding materials and your VR game should all be accessible to you.

Rain Michaels wears many hats. She is the UX designer behind Google’s Action Blocks and the new enhanced Select-to-Speak features on Chrome OS. As if that weren’t enough, she is also one of the maintainers for accessibility on the community-developed Drupal content management system, and she is a co-chair of W3C’s Cognitive Accessibility task force. On today's show, we talk about all of it, and how Rain thinks about making sites and tools accessible to people with a variety of cognitive challenges.

Excitement about the ways virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality could change our sensory experience of the world is palpable in some communities. But for people with accessibility needs, the very centrality of sensory experience can seem like a barrier. Designers and developers are working to change the perception and the reality of how disabled people interact with XR – extended reality. My guest, Reginé Gilbert, is teaching her student how to think inclusively when they build or envision XR experiences.

Indigenous people often face an array of barriers to economic opportunity. Poverty, oppression and simple lack of access to the Internet service are among them. We'll talk about expanding opportunity through education, career preparation and extension of broadband to indigenous communities in Canada. What you'll hear applies to any population whose physical separation diminishes opportunity.

Three Apple news junkies give the company's fall product announcement event a few days to settle. We weigh in on all the new hardware announcements and what we imagine could come next.

Ten years ago, a pair of accessibility advocates decided to bring attention to the need for better accessibility in digital realms. They created Global Accessibility Awareness Day, or #GAAD. The annual event now attracts participation from Fortune 500 companies, including Apple, Google and Microsoft. But according to cofounder Joe Devon, #GAAD is still about developers doing the work to build things everyone can use.

Mobile and desktop accessibility are similar, but different, just as mobile browsers can show the same pages desktop ones can, but with different interfaces and quirks. On this episode, we're talking about how to use mobile tools to test the accessibility of Web sites in iOS. My guest is the author of the [#a11ytools](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/a11ytools-web-accessibility/id1356241530) testing suite.

Beyond the checkboxes and status reports that tally the numbers of women, people of color, and (on rare occasions) people with disabilities an organization has hired, are the lived experiences of individuals who seek to thrive in a variety of STEM careers. We discuss these topics and lots more with an educator, an engineer and an advocate for meaningful, sustainable DEI in the workplace.

NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory has a bird's-eye view of exploding stars, black holes and other distant astronomical phenomenon. Part of interpreting the massive amounts of data the telescope collects is creating data visualizations. But how can someone who is blind or visually impaired share in the beauty and the science of the images Chandra data scientists create? You're about to find out.

Tech-assisted navigation means more than using your phone or other GPS-equipped device to find your way outside. Improving indoor navigation has long been a project for people with blindness and low vision, but its importance is growing for venues and tech companies, too.

What's new in Android 12, and in accessibility for Google platforms? I'm visiting with my favorite Google-focused writers for a one-month-past-I/O update from Google world.

Apple laid a bevy of updates on the waiting throng during its 2021 WWDC Keynote event. From iOS to macOS, privacy to Siri, the announcements touched most aspects of the company's operating systems. How much can we talk about in an hour? Let's find out!

We take a look at several preview announcements Apple made in late May. Unusually for the company, and for accessibility updates, the focus was on features we'll see later in the year. They include: assistive touch for Apple Watch, eye tracking on iPadOS, vastly improved hearing aid support, enhancements to VoiceOver image recognition and the proverbial MORE.

Apple AirTags have been in the wild for a few weeks now, and my guests have them. We talk about how and whether the little object-finders are useful, what using them is like, and how they work for blind users.

In its second-larges acquisition ever, Microsoft is buying Nuance Communications. Variously identified as a cloud AI company and a purveyor of speech-to-text tools like Dragon, Nuance is a leader in voices for screen readers. So. What does it all mean?

Traditionally, making web sites accessible to all began with coding pages to follow established standards from the W3C. Developers can also go further to support screen reader users, people with low vision, cognitive disabilities, ADHD and more. Now, AI has been applied to this task in the form of server-side software called accessibility overlays. But while these overlays promise turnkey protection from lawsuits, many people with disabilities say they do not deliver accessibility, and sometimes compromise it.

A platform that first entered many people's consciousness as the social network for teens and younger has become a place many creators and viewers find joy, and respite from some of the more toxic aspects of social media. We're talking TikTok.

Clubhouse is the buzzy, audio-only social network with lots of venture funding and problematic privacy policies. Some call it "talk radio," – not a compliment – some say it could replace podcasts, and some are just trying to have an accessible experience. This episode was recorded inside Clubhouse with a few guests you've heard before on Parallel, and some you haven't. We'll talk about privacy, exclusivity, the tech bro vibe, how the service has benefited community in the accessibility community, and how that community has begun to come together to address some of the app's own accessibility problems. Because I recorded (with knowledge and permission from all speakers) in the app, the audio is good, but not great. Better to say that it varies. This is an edited version of a two-hour conversation – not including the after-party. I'm going to call it the first Parallel live show.

Seeing AI, an app for iOS that provides AI-driven information to users with blindness and visual impairments, debuted to rapturous reviews in 2017. Born during a hacking competition at Microsoft, Seeing AI has been features on the main stage at Build, and is now maintained by a dedicated team within the company. The latest version takes advantage of the LIDAR sensor in iPhones 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max, and in the 2020 iPad Pro. Today we're talking to the leader of the Seeing AI team.

What's it like to cover the biggest tech trade show of the year when it's virtual? We talk with Daily Tech News Show's Tom Merritt about how he did it, what he saw, and what he hopes for the next time CES rolls around. How big were the TVs, how many phones folded and was the accessibility buzz any louder than usual?

Audio description – the process of explaining aspects of the visual world for the benefit of people with blindness or visual impairments, is usually a one-directional process, where the describer explains and the listener consumes. But a pair of podcasters wanted to make the process more dynamic, giving the AD consumer a way to ask questions about what the describer sees. I'm talking with the hosts of Talk Description to Me.

What does it mean to have a productivity system? For many, Getting Things Done provides structure and a method. Your host is a stranger in this land of systems, having used her own methods and digital tools to manage time and projects, but never taken up a system. On this episode, two guests explain how a systematic approach has improved their lives and work

From the technology impacts of COVID-19 to the ways Apple succeeded and didn't, here's Parallel's sendoff of 2020.

In the second installment of my review of the new iPhone 12 and 12 Pro, I take some new accessibility features for a spin, including people detection, screen recognition, image description and text recognition.

In a crossover episode with the Maccessibility Roundtable, we take a look at Apple's "One More Thing" event, mere moments after it ended. Hear about the M1 chip and three new Macs based upon it.

How do Apple's iPhone 12 and 12 Pro stack up from an accessibility perspective? In part 1 of my review, I tackle some hardware basics. Do their size, weight, grippability, displays and camera features make them compelling options for people with disabilities? This generation of phones also extend the accessibility features of iOS, using machine-learning and, in the 12 Pro, the LIDAR scanner. [Transcript](https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/relayparallel/par_038.docx)

In this solo show, I talk about how I've set up and problem-solved for daily video calls and video podcasts. It's a lot! I've included helpful personal experiences and tips that apply whether you're using Zoom, Google Meet, Skype or Teams. It's about looking good on video if video is hard for you to see.

We talk about the many ways to implement home automation with or without a plan. Today's guests agree on a favorite platform, and they're here to tell you why.

In what has become at least an annual tradition, I talk Android with two people who know it well, from both the mainstream and accessibility perspective. What's new in Android 11 and what accessibility features have joined the ranks, even before Google's phones got the new OS?

The filmed version of "Hamilton" as presented on Disney+ has an audio description track. Some who have used it find the track lacking. Someone decided to do something about it. Find out how it happened, how it was done, and how one AD user reacted.

What's coming for accessibility on Apple's platforms later this year? My guests are Sarah Herrlinger, Apple's Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives, and Dean Hudson, an engineer on the Apple accessibility team. We talk VoiceOver/Screen Recognition, accessibility improvements for XCode, Magnifier updates, new Braille features for iOS, Big Sur's impact on low-vision accessibility, Headphone Accommodation and Back Tap.

There are accessible video games, but it's not a given. The long-awaited The Last of Us 2 has taken lots of knocks from reviewers, but it's probably the most accessible game ever.

WWDC 2020 is like no previous iteration of Apple's annual developer event. We talk about what's new from Apple, including accessibility updates for various platforms. We also dig in on tech conferences, both virtual and real. What do we want from them and what are the barriers to making them great experiences.

Here's where you learn about developing inclusive apps – not why it's a good thing, but how developers can get started doing it. We talk about addressing a variety of disabilities, and the ways and means of user testing to achieve apps that are accessible in more than name only

Video just keeps growing as a way to tell stories about technology. Both of my guests have made video a mainstay of their creative output. I wanted these two experts to school my audio-centric self. We also talk a whole lot about accessibility advocacy through the video medium.

Here's the Parallel take on two new bits of Apple gear. What will each mean for users, and for Apple itself. We talk iPhone SE the sequel, iPad's new Magic Keyboard, how WWDC could come off this year, and what Apple stories we hoped we would be talking about in 2020 – before the pandemic.

How do product reviewers work? Do the people who evaluate gadgets for your favorite sites do rigorous testing, or rely on their gut to form an opinion? And who are they writing for? We talk with two people who review tech products about what it takes to write an authoritative post that people looking to buy will actually want to read.

What's it like to work at home when you usually go to an office? My guests, a Microsoft program manager and a radio reporter, will fill you in.

I'm BACK, with a solo episode that amounts to 'what I did on my unintended podcast vacation.' With Apple products. I finally own an Apple Watch, and the latest edition of my book about iOS accessibility is out the door.

There's a new operating system in town, and it's delicious. It's Android 10. Join us for a look at what's new.

In the final episode featuring bonus content from "36 Seconds that Changed Everything: How the iPhone Learned to Talk" I chat with someone who had very good reasons for being skeptical of Apple, but who eventually embraced iOS, once it proved itself.

When Apple brought accessibility to the Mac, and later, the iPhone, Jonathan Mosen was a skeptic. But unlike a lot of them, Jonathan could back up his point of view. He's spent his career working in assistive technology, both as an advocate and product reviewer, and as an employee of companies that make it. He has many fans, and is a lightning rod for plenty of others in the blindness community. When I interviewed Jonathan for "36 Seconds that Changed Everything: How the iPhone Learned to Talk," I didn't expect that his journey from critic to iPhone owner and book author would form such a neat arc in the story.

Research for my documentary, "36 Seconds that Changed Everything: How the iPhone Learned to Talk" included interviews with two longtime iOS developers, each of whom took an early interest in accessibility. We talked about the process of developing accessible apps, why they do it and how users respond to what they build.

From the moment Steve Jobs announced it in 2007, anticipation for the first iPhone was off the charts. And when it shipped? Customers lined up around their local Apple stores; some arriving days before the phones could be bought. But the hype and hysteria left one group of cell phone users out – if you had a disability, the new hotness was just a cold, unresponsive rectangle of plastic and glass. This is the story of how that changed in June of 2009, and what it has meant to people who are blind, have a hearing disability, or experience motor delays. This is the story of iPhone accessibility.

Apple's Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives, Sarah Herrlinger talks about new and updated accessibility features on the company's platforms, as well as a bit of iOS access history.

Google I/O and Microsoft Build are in the rear view mirror, but what did each dev conferences have to tell us about accessibility? And which of their tent pole technologies are being used to power the next generation of fancy tach for people with a variety of disabilities? And also gaming!

I talked with two iOS developers who have a lot in common. They're independents who produce series of popular apps. And without really meaning to, they have each earned a reputation for thoughtful accessibility.

Each spring, all the accessibility tech nerds go to the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference in Southern California. At the end, a bunch of us do a wrap-up podcast for Blind Bargains, which covers the show from soup to nuts, Braille to navigation. I'm bringing you that show in hopes that it gives you some insight into how what's happening in accessible tech matches up with the wider world.

Last Monday, Apple announced Apple News +. And I'm breaking usual format to give you a first look and demo, complete with extra accessibility sprinkles.

Darcy Burnard, a friend and longtime podcast collaborator, talks with me about making podcasts accessibly. Which tools work, which ones don't, and which can be made to do our bidding?

Every tech-savvy person ends up helping some portion of her or his family get the printer working, software installed, or spam banished. I wanted to find out how others do it, so I talked to fellow family tech supporters, who have also done this work professionally.

Can you turn an iPad into your primary computer, and if you do that, is it the best choice you can make, or a stunt to talk about on podcasts? I pose these blunt questions to my iPad-dominant guests. And give you a bushel of links, too.

I wanted to celebrate the end of another year by bringing listeners a few gifts from past Parallel guests. And as it turned out, there's great stuff for users of iOS, Android, macOS and Windows. And games!

Which is more fun; a thorough-going discussion of home automation tech, or Allison and Mikah geeking out on any subject? Fortunately, it's not necessary that you make a choice.

Shortcuts, not just the Siri ones, have the potential to change the way people use iOS. I talk with a couple of shortcut-makers. The enthusiasm is infectious.

We gather to mourn the demise of the FilmStruck streaming service, a lifeline for cord-cutting fans of classic and art film, and a way to pass film history on to new generations. We also offer you an amazing array of links.

Smart speakers have very much been a part of this fall's tech product announcement season. On this episode, we kick the various speakers and virtual assistants around, and give some thought to their place in our lives.

"What this operating system needs is a real dark mode." Many have made that declarative statement at one time or another. But what is dark mode, or what should it be? How have the various mobile and desktop OS makers actually implemented the mainstream version – read much better version – of what users with visual disabilities have known for years as inverted colors?

I let the fall Apple event soak in for a couple of days before rounding up some folks to talk about it. Watches, phones, and new iOS features are all on the bill of fare. And Mikah and David share their Apple addictions.

When you make and sell software, a lot of the challenges of running a business have to do with managing projects and people, and finding effective ways to communicate with customers and potential customers. I'm talking to two CEOs who run small tech companies, and who, for my money, excel in communicating about what they're doing in honest, transparent ways.

The Parallel breaks format for a special episode with the man behind Mac automation at Apple, Sal Soghoian. It's one of those encore presentations, but well worth your time! For almost 20 years, Sal made sure automation was a part of the Mac, whether it meant advocating personally with Steve Jobs, or building tools like Automator that allow users to customize their machines, and make them do exactly what they want them to do. Sal continues to develop and advocate for automation on Apple platforms, including work on a new automation platform with The Omni Group. We talk about this an so much more on this episode.

We're describing audio description with audio. How do movies or TV shows acquire audio description? Which streaming services are heroes, and which fall short? Who describes, and how does description work? And how can you find described content?

Personal computers have been around long enough that many of us have fond memories of a formative device, a technology, or an operating system. Some of us collect obsolete hardware; others recall the history because they were a part of making it.

Parallel is a tech podcast with accessibility sprinkles. It's new on Relay FM. Meet the show, meet the host, and find out what comes next.