Parallel
127 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago - ★★★★★ - 4 ratingsWhy don’t the worlds of mainstream tech and accessibility tech ever seem to collide? Shelly Brisbin, who keeps one foot in each, wants to know. She and her guests from both worlds chew over the news and trends of the day, mixing in an accessibility perspective. Hosted by Shelly Brisbin.
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Episodes
91: I'm VR Curious
March 19, 2024 21:30 - 59 minutes - 54.4 MBZach Knox bought a Vision Pro when they first became available, anticipating that Apple's headset would provide accessibility features. How those features might work with Zach's low vision? That was a big unknown. Guest Starring: Zach Knox Links and Show Notes: Support Parallel with a Relay FM Membership Submit Feedback Vision Accessibility on Apple's Vision Pro Create accessible spatial experiences - WWDC23 - Videos - Apple Developer Blackbox for Vision on the App S...
90: I Want to Pinch and Zoom the World
February 13, 2024 16:00 - 58 minutes - 54 MBSubtitle: Hands-On with Apple Vision Pro Accessibility Apple's Vision Pro headset offers a number of accessibility features. But how well do they serve those with disabilities, and what should we expect from future versions of the product? Now we have some answers. Guest Starring: Robin Christopherson Links and Show Notes: Support Parallel with a Relay FM Membership Submit Feedback
89: Low Vision Pro
January 09, 2024 19:00 - 30 minutes - 28 MBI spoke with Steven Scott and Shaun Preece for their show, Double Tap. They wanted my thoughts on how Apple's Vision Pro might land with users who have low vision. Steven kindly gave me permission to republish that conversation here. Guest Starring: Steven Scott and Shaun Preece Links and Show Notes: Support Parallel with a Relay FM Membership Submit Feedback Double Tap – It's a tech show. Honest.
88: How Hard Could XCode Be?
November 22, 2023 18:45 - 49 minutes - 45.3 MBHow a young entrepreneur turned her own technology need into an app designed for other people with low-vision. Guest Starring: Rebeccah Rosenberg Links and Show Notes: Support Parallel with a Relay FM Membership Submit Feedback ReBokeh app LowVision
87: A Fish On Your Washing Machine
October 10, 2023 19:00 - 1 hour - 62.6 MBWhat's the significance of Apple's iPhone 15 lineup, from an accessibility point of view? Guest Starring: Steven Scott Links and Show Notes: Support Parallel with a Relay FM Membership Submit Feedback Access Tech Live - YouTube Introducing: Be My AI Apple’s new FineWoven iPhone cases are very bad - The Verge FineWoven hot take: It’s fine? – Six Colors Modern Leather Cases | NOMAD®
86: An Immigrant in the Country of the Blind
September 13, 2023 03:15 - 54 minutes - 50.1 MBAndrew 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.
85: AI Will Not Fix Accessibility
July 20, 2023 14:00 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBEven 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.
84: Now that We've Had Some Time to Process...
June 20, 2023 14:30 - 47 minutes - 43.5 MBMy 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.
83: AI, AI, IO
May 23, 2023 21:45 - 59 minutes - 55 MBTaking 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.
82: Entirely Individualistic Low-Vision Girl
May 18, 2023 14:15 - 1 hour - 36 MBThis 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!
81: Tools and Tips for Mobile App Developers
April 25, 2023 14:00 - 48 minutes - 44.8 MBiOS developer Rob Whitaker returns to Parallel for a chat about APIs and tools developers can use to make their mobile apps more accessible.
80: When Success Means Buying A Smaller Suit
April 11, 2023 14:00 - 43 minutes - 39.6 MBStarting 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 accessi...
79: Story Book
March 29, 2023 02:00 - 27 minutes - 25.8 MBTen iOSes ago, I wrote a book called iOS Access for All. Here's how it has evolved over the years.
78: So Many Thoughts and Feelings
March 14, 2023 19:00 - 1 hour - 76.6 MBAppleVis, 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.
77: What is CSS Speech?
February 15, 2023 02:45 - 36 minutes - 33.4 MBWhat 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.
76: Some of My Automations are Fragile
October 26, 2022 02:00 - 1 hour - 62.3 MBWe're talking automation - mostly on macOS, with developer Brett Terpstra and fellow automation fan Darcy Burnard.
75: A Deep Dive into WCAG 2.2. And Beyond.
September 27, 2022 20:45 - 1 hour - 28.7 MBThe 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.
74: The Swipey on the Stem
September 14, 2022 01:45 - 1 hour - 63.6 MBParallel 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.
73: A Week with Apple's Accessibility Preview
May 24, 2022 16:00 - 51 minutes - 47.8 MBWe take a look at new accessibility features coming later this year to Apple platforms.
72: Building Accessibility Products as a Startup
May 22, 2022 23:00 - 1 hour - 55.9 MBCreating 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.
71: Clicking the Box Offends Me
May 04, 2022 01:00 - 1 hour - 61.2 MBWhether 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."
70: Helping Astronauts Maintain Mental Health in Space.. And a Lot More
April 13, 2022 01:15 - 48 minutes - 44.2 MBMily 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.
69: Jobs and Disability: Beyond the Interview
March 16, 2022 01:00 - 48 minutes - 44.8 MBPeople 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.
68: Can You Describe It?
February 16, 2022 15:00 - 30 minutes - 28.5 MBAudio 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.
67: A Character on My Own Show
February 04, 2022 13:15 - 1 hour - 55.8 MBI, 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.
66: Beyond Gaming: Designing VR Experiences for People with Disabilities
January 19, 2022 00:00 - 35 minutes - 32.5 MBEnjoying 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.
65: Accessibility is a Spectrum for Gamers, Too
December 23, 2021 22:00 - 57 minutes - 53 MBTalking 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.
64: What Doe It Mean to be a Cyborg?
December 09, 2021 03:30Lawrence 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.
64: What Does It Mean to be a Cyborg?
December 09, 2021 03:30 - 50 minutes - 46.5 MBLawrence 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.
63: The Standards Can't Tell You Where Delight Is
November 23, 2021 22:00 - 31 minutes - 29.5 MBChristin 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.
62: UX Design and Cognitive Disability
November 09, 2021 22:00 - 49 minutes - 45.2 MBRain 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 chall...
61: How to Make Extended Reality an Accessible Reality
October 26, 2021 14:00 - 29 minutes - 27.3 MBExcitement 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...
60: Tech Inclusion and Indigenous Peoples
October 14, 2021 01:30 - 42 minutes - 38.9 MBIndigenous 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.
59: Apple Event: Takes Served at a Pleasing Temperature
September 21, 2021 15:00 - 1 hour - 58.8 MBThree 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.
58: #GAAD: Beyond the Hashtag
September 15, 2021 00:15 - 38 minutes - 35.4 MBTen 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.
57: Web Accessibility Testing on Mobile
August 17, 2021 19:45 - 47 minutes - 44 MBMobile 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.
56: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Tech
August 03, 2021 22:15 - 1 hour - 71.1 MBBeyond 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.
55: I Think I'm Part of a MISSION
July 20, 2021 20:30 - 34 minutes - 33.2 MBNASA'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.
54: Indoor Navigation: We're Working on the Sighted Experience
July 06, 2021 14:00 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MBTech-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.
53: Nothing is Ruined in Android 12
June 22, 2021 14:30 - 55 minutes - 64.3 MBWhat'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.
52: The Simone Biles of Text Recognition
June 08, 2021 19:30 - 54 minutes - 62.2 MBApple 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!
51: Layers of Apple's Accessibility Onion
June 01, 2021 16:00 - 1 hour - 77.7 MBWe 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.
50: A Use for My 13th AirTag
May 26, 2021 01:15 - 1 hour - 71 MBApple 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.
49: Voices in the Cloud
May 11, 2021 14:00 - 40 minutes - 46.7 MBIn 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?
48: The Trouble with Accessibility Overlays
April 29, 2021 22:45 - 45 minutes - 51.9 MBTraditionally, 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 someti...
47: It All Comes Down to Cats
March 20, 2021 21:15 - 1 hour - 98.6 MBA 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.
46: Welcome to the Clubhouse
February 27, 2021 20:00 - 1 hour - 102 MBClubhouse 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 comm...
45: Like a Friend Sitting on My Shoulder
February 17, 2021 01:15 - 33 minutes - 38.6 MBSeeing 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.
44: CES: In These Virtual Times
January 27, 2021 20:45 - 33 minutes - 39 MBWhat'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?
43: What Do Jazz Hands Look Like?
January 23, 2021 20:30 - 44 minutes - 51 MBAudio 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.