Skip to content →

Tag: news

Coming soon: A world of perspective from the global blind community. The World Blind Herald.

Published September 12, 2022 by L. Legendary

Chris Hofstader has been a fixture in the blind community for decades. While the bulk of his career was spent as an executive Vice President at Freedom Scientific, now known as Vispero, he is probably most well-known for his writing. His web site, “Blind Confidential,” offered candid, and anonymous, commentary on assistive technology products, service agencies and organizations, and legislation relevant to the blind community. His unique, journalistic writing style, often biting, sometimes intellectual, and almost always controversial, won him a devoted readership.

Chris briefly attended Harvard University as an English major, and graduated from NYU with a degree in computer science. He is well traveled, well read, and has an abiding love of music, art, and baseball. He also has a new project underway, a venture that will enable Chris to share his skills and interest, while providing a platform for others to do the same.

On January 4th, 2023, a new digital publication, the World Blind Herald, will make its debut. As editor-in-chief, Chris plans to curate, create, and collaborate with other writers to publish a weekly digest of content relevant to a global blind community. Topics include sports and science, travel and technology, fashion and lifestyle, employment news, accessibility issues, and medical breakthroughs, just to name a few. Many of the articles will be published in a digest format, with links back to the original content. A global network of contributors will provide featured articles, and share their own experiences as a blind person living in a sighted society. The mission of World Blind Herald is to inform and entertain readers by publishing articles on a wide array of topics regarding blindness and blind people from the entire English speaking world.

“Our fundamental values are that the community of blind people is not homogeneous and that different blind people have different values, dreams and aspirations,” says Hofstader. “We intend to show this spectrum in all of its brilliant colors.”

You can visit the web site, WorldBlindHerald.com here, and subscribe to receive pre-launch versions of the digest, as the countdown to launch begins. Follow World Blind Herald @BlindHerald on Twitter, and look for a Facebook page, coming soon.

Shown is the World Blind Herald logo, which is a colorful blue and green globe. In the center of the globe are the letters WBH in white block letters.

My role will be that of marketing and promotion, so I’ll be the one behind many of the social media posts and front-facing communications. I’ll also occasionally contribute articles in the fashion and lifestyle category, and edit those that are submitted by guest authors.

If you’d like to contribute articles for publication in World Blind Herald, contact Chris at chris.hofstader@gmail.com or find the contact form on the World Blind Herald website.

LL

Comments closed

Accessible apps for news junkies, no rehab needed

Published October 31, 2013 by L. Legendary

If you know me at all, or if you follow me (@Accessible_Info) on Twitter, one thing you know about me is that I’m a bit of a news junkie. You’ve probably become aware of, if not actually annoyed by, my early-morning dissemination of articles, tweeted out to my followers, from a variety of news sources. This pattern is typically repeated at various points throughout the day, as I check in on all my favorite sites and apps.

I have always been the type to keep up with current events, but one of the ways in which I was changed by the events of September 11th, 2001, was in a radical increase in my news and information consumption behavior. In the years following 9/11, I began to obsessively monitor the news. This habit has now become such a part of my daily life that it was only natural that my very first iOS app, and many subsequent downloads, have been news related. Below is a short list of some of the apps I use, and a few comments as to what has worked well for me, and a few I’ve discarded.

My very first app download was the news app by Reuters. Interestingly, my “beginner’s luck,” as to a great accessible app that I use every single day has only been duplicated a few times…namely, by the NPR news and BBC news apps. This news and info trifecta has been a reliable and useful combination of global reportage.

I soon discovered, much to my disappointment, that accessibility can sometimes be broken when an app is updated. I started out with the Breaking News app and the AP Mobile app, but after an update, they ceased to function well for me. They were great to push out alert notifications, but after awhile, I became frustrated if I wanted to pursue a story but could not, due to the lack of accessibility. Ultimately, I would return to my three favorites. Delete, delete.

By no means have I stopped there. I said I was a news and info junkie, remember? you think I would quit at three? Don’t be ridiculous.

I decided I wanted audio news, not just printed news. one nice feature of both the NPR News and BBC News apps is the ability to listen to news stories, built right into the app. However, that didn’t stop me from downloading the Swell app, Hourly News, and Downcast, so that I could also hear my favorite news podcasts. More on Downcast in an upcoming article. Just recently, I downloaded 5By5 Radio, a streaming service featuring tech news.

Oh, but wait…there’s more. I also have to have my daily dose of Apple news, so I check out App Advice and Apps Gone Free every day. I also need to have a good dose of science info, so I rely on Phys.org to dish up intriguing science stories. Finally, I must have access to all the news happening in the blindness, accessibility, and assistive technology industry, so there’s the obligatory iBlink Radio app, Blind Bargains, and Access World apps. think I’m done? Oh, no.

Let us not forget newspapers. My favorite newspaper app for reading multiple papers is Earl. This is a terrific hands-free option for when I’m busy doing something, but want a story read aloud. There are several great accessible newspaper apps, but at this point, I might be duplicating myself. You think?

How do I keep up with all of this? I can’t honestly say I read every resource thoroughly every day…who could? So, to assist me in collecting stories for later reading, my enabler of choice is the Pocket app. It integrates seamlessly into so many other apps, it only requires a couple of quick taps to save an article to read it later. You can be sure on the days when my tweeps are particularly interesting, tweeting out all sorts of juicy tidbits for me to investigate, I am tapping on links and then tapping “save to Pocket” just as fast as my fingers can fly across the screen.

Unbelievably, this is not an exhaustive list. There are several assorted other informational resources I use less frequently, but love no less, and I haven’t even touched some of the info aggregation and magazine apps, such as Flipboard and Buzzfeed. neither proved to be usable for me, and I’m not sure if they are inaccessible or just flaky. I have tried, then deleted, several news apps for lack of access. most notably, the CNN app, which I actually attempted to use twice, and neither time was I able to get it to work. Come on, CNN, don’t tell me your app is inaccessible because you can’t afford to pay someone to develop an app that supports VoiceOver. if you check the sofa cushions in your break room, I’m sure you can come up with the coin. Puh-leez.

That’s the rundown of most of my news apps. Don’t be afraid to comment below and recommend your own favorites…bonus points for noting if accessible for VoiceOver users. Oh, and if you know of a news junkie support group, don’t bother telling me about it. I’m too far gone.

LL

6 Comments