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Published: May 20, 2018, 5:29 a.m.

Job Insights #4: Apps With Productivity in Mind for Education and in the Workplace. Transcript Provided

Welcome to the 4th episode of Job Insights with Serina Gilbert and Jef Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you the latest innovations from across the Vocational Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment.
From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way.
On this 4th episode of Job Insights Hope Paulos joins Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson in the studio and they talk about productivity apps and software. From the classroom to the workplace, these apps are geared towards making your daily challenges a bit more manageable, efficient and productive.
Hours Tracker, Black Board, Drafts, Files, SeeingAI, Dictionary Thesaurus Pro, KNFBReader and Bookshare’s Read To Go app are all mentioned with some great discussion about how we use these apps.
A great little Scan Stand named Foppidoo makes the scene and a conversation on Lift and Uber gets quite a chat as well.
You can check out the Meet Me Accessibly book from Jonathan Mosen and learn about Zoom on the PC.
Join the Job Insights crew and download some apps and give them a whirl. Hey, productivity rocks!

We hope you enjoy this Job Insights episode and you can send your feedback and suggestions to the Job Insights team by email at JobInsights@BlindAbilities.com

Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP

Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network.

A big Thank You goes out to CheeChau for his beautiful music!

Thank you for listening!
You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities
On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com
Send us an email
Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

 

Job Insights #4: Apps With Productivity in Mind for Education

and in the Workplace. Transcript Provided

[Music]

Female voice: I feel like I'm getting a lot better education so yeah, I think, I think the online learning is an equalizer.

Jeff: Job Insights, a podcast to help you carve out your career pathway and enhance the opportunities for gainful employment.

Female Voice: But sometimes I require KNFB Reader when I have more than one page that I want to kind of read continuously.

Jeff: Learn about resources for training education and employment opportunities.

Female Voice: Blackboard, that is a learning management system and a lot of universities are using them as well for classes.

So this particular app is available on Android, iOS, and PC, and Mac of course.

Jeff: We will hear from people seeking careers, employment, from professionals in the educational field, teachers, and innovators in this ever-changing world of technology to help you navigate the employment world and give you Job Insights and enhance the opportunities to choose the career you want.

Male Voice: Fopydo people sounds good and I actually at that time asked my son, and I, it was actually a play on the on Scooby-doo.

Jeff: And you can find the Job Insights podcast on BlindAbilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities Network with hosts Serina Gilbert and myself Jeff Thompson, and you can contact us by email at JobInsights@BlindAbilities.com, leave us some feedback, or suggest some topics that we cover.

On Twitter at Job Insights VIP, and check out the Job Insights support group on Facebook where you can learn, share, advise, and interact with the Job Insights community.

[Music]

Female Voice: Lift also released an update to their service dog policy saying that an allergy or fear of animals is not a valid reason to not pick up an individual with the service animal.

Jeff: But hey it's a good learning tool, because it's just repetitious and pretty soon it just starts coming to you, mm-hmm, so I dug right in, when I saw they had flashcards I went Wow!

[Music]

Jeff: And now please welcome Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson with Job Insights.

[Music]

Jeff: Welcome to Job Insights and this week we're talking about apps, apps that you'll use in school, at the workplace, and these are productivity type of apps, and with me today of course is Serina Gilbert how are you doing?

Serina: I'm good Jeff, how are you?

Jeff: I'm just doing great and we got a guest today all the way from Maine.

Hope Paulos, how are you Hope?

Hope: I'm doing great, how are you?

Jeff: I'm doing good, we're all doing good, so that's good.

Today we're gonna talk about apps, you know some of these apps are mostly productivity type of things, stuff that you'll use to, you know get things done and that's, that's what we're, we're all about here on Job Insights.

So Serina, last podcast you said you were holding out on us from what you're gonna tell us, is the cliffhanger over or are you gonna tell us?

Serina: Oh we've got a little bit of a wait cuz we have to talk to Hope first, we have a guest.

Jeff: How about you Hope, what do you got?

Hope: I certainly don't have a cliffhanger.

[Laughter]

Serina: We set her up there Jeff!

Jeff: yeah.

Hope: Yeah you did!

[Laughter]

Jeff: So Hope, how's it going out and Maine?

Hope: It's going well, the weather is nice finally, when I talked to you and Pete last time, it was March, and it was in the 20's, 20 degrees.

Now we are in about the 60's, 70's, so I am absolutely loving it, birds are chirping, the guide dog is going for walks, he's enjoying it,

Jeff: Is he bringing you with?

Hope: Oh yeah of course!

[Laughter]

Jeff: That's great!

Serina: But Jeff needs to know if you planted any Apple trees?

Hope: No.

Serina: Only PC trees?

Hope: Only PC trees.

[Laughter]

Jeff: Oh that's the running joke isn't it?

So when it comes to productivity type of apps, Hope what did you bring to the show today?

Hope: Sure, so I have a couple of them.

I don't use this particular one very much right now because I do work for Apple, and Apple has me on a strict schedule so I don't need this particular one, but for people who are freelancing, the name of the app is called Hours Tracker, it's a free app and basically it allows you to track your hours of course, hence the name, but it also allows you to track your earnings, and it will deduct the taxes as well.

So it will tell you how much is deducting for taxes.

So it's great for individuals who are freelancing.

The second app that I have brought to the show is Blackboard.

That is a Learning Management System and a lot of universities are using them as well for classes, so this particular app is available on Android, iOS, and PC, and Mac of course.

This will allow you to do your classes online literally anywhere and actually a couple of the blindness organizations were working in tandem to get this particular app accessible.

It's extremely accessible, there was only one thing that I commented on a couple weeks ago and I sent feedback in to the iOS developers and they fixed it.

They're very very good about fixing issues that people might have.

The other app that I brought, that I brought to the show is Learning Ally.

This is an app that will allow you to download books and it's also good for individuals who are dyslexic and who have low vision because I believe it will allow you to magnify the print in the actual book so you can read along with the narrator which is quite helpful.

That's more University as well, University-type app, Productivity app and of course the last app would be the Bookshare app.

The Read2Go, this allows you if you have a membership to Bookshare, which I believe most students can get for free, it allows you to read the books on your phone be it Android or iOS.

Jeff: Now on the Hours Tracker, is that what it's called?

Hour Tracker?

Hope: Hours Tracker yeah.

Jeff: Hours Tracker.

So when you're doing the setup, your presets, do you put in your wage, and then it just calculates it and are you able to output that anywhere, or is it just something you read?

Hope: Absolutely, so this particular program allows you to put in the wage, and it allows you to put in whether or not taxes are withheld, so technically even if you were, you know not freelancing, if you working a job as an employee, a W2, you could use it as well.

Basically it allows you to put in your breaks and your lunches and things like that, and it lets you know when to go on the break, and when to go to lunch, and when to clock out, and when to clock in.

[Music]

App Voice: Sample Job, 0.05H today, 0H button, clock out now or long-press for extras menu, button, next clock out now, button, cause now, button, break now button, break now, sample job 0 H on break 8:10 a.m., 0.02H button, end break or long press for extras menu button, end break.

Hope: It also will let you know, like you can, you can set a reminder to have it automatically clock in when you get to work, and yes you can send it, I think it's a CSV file, or CV file, something like that, a database file, and it will put it in an Excel spreadsheet I think as well, so that you can show it to your employer.

Jeff: That's kind of neat.

Serina: That's pretty cool I like that.

Hope: Yeah it's a it's a pretty neat app for sure.

Jeff: Intuit the makers of QuickBooks and various tax applications has a program and it might be part of their bundle and I believe you can buy it separately, I believe it's called Self-Employed, but that sells on a monthly subscription for 7 to 8 dollars a month.

Hope: Yeah this is free and I think, I'm trying to think if I paid for anything, I think I did just because I was freelancing at the time and I wanted them more, more, so it has a lite version and it has a full-featured version, but even the full-featured version wasn't some really really, you know cheap price.

Jeff: A one-time fee?

Hope: A one-time fee yeah.

Jeff: That makes perfectly good sense, economically I can track that pretty good.

[Laughter]

[Music]

Jeff: You can download Hours Tracker free from the App Store or the Google Play Store. Hourlys Tracker is free for up to 21 days of time entries and if you upgrade to the pro or professional, you get rid of all the ads, unlimited amount of entries that you can make, the only difference between the professional and the personal is you can have unlimited amount of jobs in the professional, and you can upgrade to the professional or the personal in the in-app option.

The professional will run you $9.99 and the personal will run you $5.99.

Once again, a one-time payment, I was really intrigued when I heard about Hours Tracker, I downloaded to my iPhone, and started using it right away, I named a job, I started the time, and when I was completed I stopped the time.

I also had the option to input the time that I wanted it to start or input the time that I wanted to stop, otherwise you could do it in real time and that works out really nice.

There's also an option that you can take notes and keep them with that job.

I found that the accessibility on Hours Tracker on my iPhone was second to none, all the buttons were labeled and the intuitiveness was what I expected for when I have started logging the job, putting in the hours, getting out of the job, putting notes in, was just exactly how I expected it would work and it did work that way.

Another small part of the accessibility, it lets you cancel a pop-up or dismiss the pop-up that comes up, and I really like that because if you've ever had a pop-up pop-up and not be able to get rid of it, that's not good.

So after kicking around Hours Tracker on my iPhone for one job, I personally recommend this for anybody who is self-employed or someone who works on projects and just wants to have better records of the time they spend on their projects and jobs.

[Music]

Jeff: So on the Blackboard, I remember I have not experienced Blackboard yet, but I remember going to college and I was at the mercy of every professor that was experimenting by putting stuff on the web and accessing it through a link they give you, and if it was accessible you got lucky, so Blackboard is a collective effort to make it accessible for everyone.

Hope: Absolutely, so it all depends on the type of class you're taking obviously right, if people don't know I'm going back to school to become a teacher of the blind and visually impaired and so all of the courses need to be accessible to me.

So the professor's will tag their images so that I can know what's going on, their quizzes are all accessible, obviously the discussion boards are all accessible, and I use a combination of the two apps, so I use the combination of Blackboard and I use Learning ally to be able to do my classwork, and literally like I said, I can do it anywhere.

With the phone if I have a Braille display and/or a Bluetooth keyboard I can do my homework on the beach or in the park you know, so literally anywhere and that's huge compared to when I was going back to school to get my undergrad degree, like you know 2009, that's when I graduated so it's, it's huge it's a huge step up.

Serina: Yeah I remember using Blackboard when I was doing my master's degree which would have been gosh, probably around the same time as you are doing your undergrad, so I finished in 2010 and so, I don't know, 2007, 2008, somewhere around there's when I started it and they used Blackboard for everything.

My program was pretty much 100% online, we didn't have the app back then, we just had the website, but even back then the website was pretty accessible.

I rarely had any difficulties with it and I was going for the rehabilitation counseling so the professors were a little bit more cognizant of accessible media and documents and things like that.

I loved using blackboard because it is easy to log on to, you know if I was on a break at work or whatever, or at home trying to get a discussion posted or something like that.

Hope: Yeah it is really easy to use extremely easy to use.

Jeff: Is that why you opted to do your classes online, not that you're on an island out off the shore of Maine, but.....

[Laughter]

Hope: Yeah I think, I think it's easier because I've done classes on site to, not having to do as my masters, but having to do with my undergrads degree.

I find the digital world to be a lot more accessible, I just remember going to classes on site and didn't have a lot of input from the professor.

The professor was teaching to a lecture hall full of I don't know, a hundred students, I just felt like I was kind of left out and wasn't getting all the notes that I needed to get, whereas here taking the classes online and using, again the combination of Blackboard and Learning Ally, I'm able to take the notes that I need, I'm able to contact my professors if I need to.

I have peer to peer interaction as well.

I feel like I'm getting a lot better education, so yeah I think, I think the online learning is an equalizer.

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Hope: Of sorts.

Jeff: Yeah that's great because you know everyone has to do what works for them and if you found a good way of doing it that's great, having those two apps makes it all accessible.

Hope: For the most part yeah everything is accessible, even from registering for classes, I go to Missouri State University, so using Missouri State's website is accessible.

It's just huge, it's what we're able to do as people who are blind and visually impaired with a digital world, it's absolutely huge.

Jeff: So is that something you looked for when you were looking for an online course that they did use Blackboard?

Hope: Not really, I didn't know what they used, I contacted them, I did ask them in the beginning when I was registering for the program what they used and I could have used Moodle, Moodle was another application, another learning management system that I'm familiar with and either one I would have been fine with.

I looked online and and saw the collaboration between the two blindness organizations regarding Blackboard and I'm like okay this is going to be fine, this is gonna be great, I know it's gonna be accessible, I contacted my professors beforehand and gave them my accommodations and all that and said I need extra time and because it's a digital world they can input my time-and-a-half for quizzes and allow me to have that time and you know they can input that in Blackboard and all is good.

I can't speak enough good things about accessibility and digital stuff.

Jeff: So let's see, there's Learning Ally, we will put that in the show notes, we'll put Blackboard in the show, we'll put all these in the show notes so people can click on them and go right to the App Store or the Google Play Store and we'll have the links there, so back to the cliffhanger.

[Laughter]

Jeff: Hi Serina.

Serina: And I thought of one like while we were sitting here, so even you'll be surprised Jeff.

Jeff: Ooo.

[Laughter]

Serina: My absolute number one favorite app and I see it all over all of the groups like iPhone and iPad apps, and the assistive technology group, all of them, a seeing AI, I don't think it's any surprise there.

That app allows me to be a lot less dependent on a human reader to just go through what's in my mailbox that I get at work.

Now I can just kind of okay, yeah I need someone to finish reading that to me, or oh, this is just something that needs to go in the file, it's cut down on how much time I have to spend with somebody sitting at my desk with me going through stuff, and it's free, which is amazing to me because I remember reading gosh, I think it was like two years ago when Microsoft had their hackathon and they had released a video about seeing AI and they were showing a demo of it and I was like, well that's cool but it'll never come out and if it does it'll be super expensive.

And then all of a sudden there's a link, and it's free, and it works, like amazingly and it, I can't thank Microsoft enough for that, that actually was a big surprise for me.

Jeff: Yeah, you just open it up and boom, short text is reading.

Serina: Yeah, from across the room right Jeff!

[Laughter]

Jeff: Yeah, that happened to me and, I shouldn't say it but I was that Orcam demonstration when they were having the little issues, and I was reading the wall that had their sign on it, so I was like wow, this is already talking, just out of the box, just turn it on and there it is.

Male Voice: I use seeing AI all of the time to determine what's in my medicine cabinet, for documents you know I use seeing AI for short text.

[Music]

Female Voice: I use the document reader all the time, not gonna say it's as good as KNFB Reader because it's not.

I did a test between reading my mail with it and with KNFB Reader and I found KNFB Reader to be far more stable, but I still like the app, I use it a lot, I'm glad that it's one of the tools in our toolbox.

Female voice: For reading and stuff I used to go to KNFB Reader all the time but it just seems like Prizmo go and seeing AI is so much easier that I tend to go to them more.

Male Voice: Seeing AI is my main go-to app and I use that, the short text channel mostly if I can't identify an item with that I will switch to the product channel if it has a barcode.

A lot of the apps like [Inaudible] and Aipoly Vision and [inaudible], I've deleted most of those off of there because I can accomplish the same thing with seeing AI

[Music]

Male Voice: Jeffrey I see apps like Aipoly Vision, [Inaudible], Identifee, of course the KNFB Reader, I think seeing AI is becoming the main tool in the toolbox.

Jeff: And you know, all the other channels that they have on their to four options but that's the one I use all the time because, you open it up it works.

Serina: Yeah there's a handwriting one too that I've tried only a couple of times, but it surprisingly did recognize the handwriting enough for me to figure out at least what the note was generally about cuz sometimes my clients will stop in and I can't see them, and they'll leave a handwritten note at the front desk and obviously it's probably dependent on the individuals handwriting but I was at least able to get the name of the client and know, okay I'll just call them and see what they needed.

Jeff: Hmm, well that's good.

Serina: That one's in BETA I think.

Jeff: Yeah you always wonder when they have a little feature that's in there and they tag the word BETA after it's like, you better use it now because it may not be there!

Serina: Or it's like the disclaimer don't trust this feature.

It might not work right!

Jeff: Mm-hm try it on a doctor's prescription.

[Laughter]

Serina: Oh gosh.

Jeff: That's the to test.

Serina: This is totally not productive but when seeing AI first came out, we were playing with it in my office to see how old it thought everyone was.

[Laughter]

So all of my co-workers were like changing their hairstyles or putting on glasses or taking off glasses to try to trick it to make it think that they were younger.

Jeff: That's a great use of state-funded money.

[Laughter]

Serina: Hey!

Jeff: I know everyone's been doing that, it's kind of a novelty thing and that's like artificial intelligence to me when they're built into apps to me, it's like you know when you go to the carnival, you know, they'll guess your age and you win the whistle or something but you know, I'm not into the novelty stuff but that really does work.

Serina: Hope, do you use seeing AI for any of your school work, or since it's mostly digital do you not have to use it a lot?

Hope: Yeah I use it sometimes, I use it for work actually to find out whether or not my Mac, my work Mac is gonna turn on correctly.

We have so many policies in place at Apple that sometimes voice-over doesn't turn on correctly and so I use either seeing AI or I also use AIRA for that, but most of the time I just grab my phone and you seeing AI.

Speaking of the, or how old people were, I actually did that last weekend I think it was on my grandmother's 93rd birthday.

I went up to her and took a picture of her and had seeing AI tell her how old she was, now again she's 93 right, so it said a 65 year old woman is smiling, or looks happy or something like that and she's like, wait, did it say 65?

[Laughter]

Hope: Shes like, I like that!

So it made her day.

Serina: Yeah.

Jeff: I actually think for women they do have a built in algorithm that knocks off a couple years just to you know, keep the customers happy.

Serina: No it added 10 years to mine, no matter what it says 10 years.

Hope: Oh really.

That's funny!

[Laughter]

Jeff: The algorithm breaker!

Serina: Gosh.

[Laughter]

The other one that I use is obviously very similar to seeing AI but sometimes I require KNFB Reader when I have more than one page that I want to kind of read continuously.

To my knowledge I don't know that you can scan multiple pages in seeing AI and if you can, somebody let me know, cuz I actually like it a little bit better.

But sometimes when I'm working from home and I don't have access to my flatbed scanner but I need to read some printed like medical documents or things like that, I'll take out KNFB Reader and just scan a whole bunch of pages all at once and then read it, through it continuously, so that's very helpful, and then also you can save on KNFB Reader in their file system, and I think I saw on the latest update that now they can sync with Google Drive and Dropbox now to, so that's kind of a really cool feature that they've integrated in there now.

Jeff: Yeah I like the KNFB Reader when I have like, I might have 10 pages of something to read and I don't want to take a picture of each of them so I put it on double sheet and then batch mode and when I turn the page it'll sense that, so you know you got the page turning then ch-ch-ch.

KNFB Reader Voice: Manual picture button, automatic picture, picture from ste..., alert, please place your device on an empty document stand and align the camera with the aperture, okay, button, flash off, button, multi-page mode off, button, multi-page mode on.

[Camera Sound Effect]

Serina: Do you have a stand that you use with it?

Jeff: Yeah I do, its the Fopydo and it was designed by Thomas Wardega, and here he is.

Thomas: Fopydo sounds good, and I actually at that time asked my son, and it was actually a play on the on Scooby Doo.

So basically this was designed from the ground up for people who are blind and visually impaired and along that process I learned to work with people who are blind so I went through a couple of revisions of the stand before I even started selling it just to make sure that people are happy with using it and that it fulfills whatever is needed from a scanning stand for people who are blind and visually impaired.

[Camera Sound Effect]

Jeff: It comes with a set of instructions that you can scan, you can put it together, once you got it together it just folds right up and you can put it in a suitcase, it takes up very little real estate.

Serina: Oh I need one, and does it work with any phone or?

Jeff: Well back when I talked with him he said it would handle, if you balanced it right, and iPad Mini, so I, I guess your your beast of a phone, your iPhone X may work.

[Laughter]

Serina: Yeah and put the link in the show notes cuz I've been, I thought, I had somebody looking for one before and they were like $50, I'm like mm-hmm, I'll just hold it up, you know.

[Laughter]

Jeff: Having the batch mode on the KNFB Reader really makes it viable product for someone that's in school that may have to be scanning a lot of pages.

Serina: I definitely need one of those.

Jeff: Yeah we'll put the link in the show notes and I believe he sells it on Amazon and if you have Amazon Prime, there you go, ten, twelve bucks.

Serina: Primes getting expensive though it's like $120.00 starting this year.

Hope: I think there's a discount for students.

Serina: It's half off for students cuz I had that for a couple of years, and then they got smart and realized that I'm not a student anymore because my school let me keep my student email address for years, and I don't even think I have it anymore now.

Now they make you verify by sending in like a schedule.

Hope: Oh really?

Serina: Yeah.

Hope: Similar to Apple music, they do the same thing.

Serina: Yeah, and I think Spotify does the same thing too.

Hope: Yep.

Serina: They got smart.

Jeff: So we'll have to put the link in there for Amazon Prime half off for students, that's good news.

Serina: Yeah that's it, and half off of Apple music and Spotify, not that those are, those could be productivity apps because if you need music to stay focused.

Hope: Technically yeah, exactly, that works!

Jeff: Or books.

Hope: Yeah.

Jeff: Amazon still sells books.

Serina: Who orders books anymore?

Jeff: Does anybody use Audible for books?

Serina: I do not, I totally looked at it, but every time I looked at it I just can't, like I think it's thirteen ninety-nine a month for so many credits and one, the amount of credits you get for that amount is equal to downloading one book, and I haven't found that it's better than just using BARD, because they usually have especially if it's a best-seller what I want anyway.

Jeff: Mm-hmm and the BARD app is totally accessible too.

Serina: Yeah it's, it's a little old school sometimes, it has its glitches but it gets the job done.

Hope: It can be yeah, exactly.

Jeff: But it's, it's something that if you do send in a report and stuff like that they'll fix it?

We can hope for the best right Hope?

Hope: Yeah exactly, yeah sure, I'll write them, I'll give them a good report!

Jeff: There you go.

Hope: Sure.

[Laughter]

Serina: Well and it's hard because I know, I think that's run by the Library of Congress so that probably takes like an act of Congress just to get a glitch fixed you know.

Jeff: Oh good one!

Serina: I didn't mean it to be all cheesy but it's kind of funny.

Jeff: Yeah it is, it is, it's nice when things work and you know, you were talking about seeing AI when you open it up short text just starts.

I got an app called Drafts, just like the seeing AI, when you open it up it just works the short text is working, do you open it up and the cursors waiting up in the upper left-hand corner and you can start typing, you don't have to open up a new file.

The neat thing is if you're in a meeting and you're taking notes and you can set it for certain increments of minutes that pass by and then next time like you open your phone, say it closed, it'll start a new file automatically.

Serina: Well that's cool.

Jeff: So you're not adding to your recipe you wrote two days ago that's still sitting there, do you want to save it, you don't know if you should save it, it automatically, so if you set it up for 10 minutes, if 10 minutes goes by, it saves it, and opens up a new one, just ready to go, so it's like a new sheet of scratch pad for you, can actually do some markups on it, yeah share it anywhere you want, it's really cool.

I do the cut and paste and then just pop it into an email, bang!

Serina: I like that, is that a free up too?

Jeff: Yeah Drafts is free, I think it's called Drafts 5, there is a professional upgrade, a pro version and that is $20 a year or two dollars a month, but you can do a lot with just the Drafts app.

I just love that because when you just want to take down a note, I don't like going into, I use pages because it syncs up with my apple orchard but when I'm at someplace where the meetings starting and I open up pages, you know it has to load up, it goes to the recent, and it seems like, you know all the gears have to spin around five times before anything happens, but this one opens up just bang, it's ready to go.

Serina: I especially have that problem using the native Notes app on the iOS devices.

Ever since they made it where you've got some notes on your iPhone, some on iCloud, some on Google Drive, or Dropbox or wherever, it's so hard for me to figure out where my notes are anymore that I just don't use that app anymore.

Jeff: And that's my second app that I was going to talk about, it's the files app in iOS platform on the iPhone.

Files, if you don't know where it went because it says, oh it's stored on the iCloud, or on the desktop in the iCloud, or on the iCloud Drive or wherever, and you start hunting around, but if you go to files and go to most recent, it'll check all those files, all those different drives, all the different places on your phone and everything, but if you go to recent and then if you click up on top you can go back and actually go specifically only to one area where you think it is, but if you put it on all, its checking all those drives that you have synced up with it and you can usually find it, so when I get lost for a second I just open up files and go to the most recent and there it is.

Serina: That's a good tip, I didn't know that.

I never really knew the point of the files app.

Jeff: Yeah check it out, open it up and just see, and you'll see what you've been doing lately.

Seirna: So I have one more that you do not know that is my favorite apps to use, any guesses?

Jeff: Hope, what do you think it is?

Hope: Hmmm, Uber, no it's not productivity, nevermind.

[Laughter]

Serina: Well technically it is, I do use Uber and Lyft a lot for work actually because I have to go as part of my job, I have to be at high schools and things like that and I am almost an exclusive Lyft user personally.

Jeff: And why Lyft over Uber?

Serina: I just have found just with my personal experience in the city that I live in that I've had better luck with Lyft drivers as far as friendliness and I have a service animal so, I've never been rejected on Uber, I'm actually, the only place I was was actually on Lyft.

I found that the cars have been cleaner and the drivers just seem friendlier and with Uber I specifically am NOT a fan of the, if we wait more than two minutes, we're gonna charge you policy.

Hope: Oh that's not good.

Serina: Yeah that's a newer policy, maybe in the last six months and that policy just really bothers me especially when you're visually impaired.

Drivers will say they're there and you're like where?

You know, and if they're automatically gonna charge you, I think it's, I don't, I guess it's maybe like five dollars, if the driver has to wait I believe it's more than two minutes, like that's stressful, it's already nerve-racking like being like, hey I've got a service animal, are they gonna drive right past me, are they gonna pick me up, and then to know they're also gonna charge me an extra five bucks if I can't find them.

And then they also tend to do the walk here and meet your driver thing.

Jeff: Oh yeah.

Serina: And I've never had that happen with Lyft no matter, I've been in downtown Denver and that's not happened before, but Uber will send you up a random parking lot or something to meet your driver.

Hope: Oh wow!

No thank you.

Serina: Yeah so that's more why I'm Lyft exclusive, and then on the driver side I'm not quite sure how it breaks down, I don't remember how much the drivers get but I know with Uber it's not like a set percentage that the drivers get as far as, like I think it with Lyft the drivers get 75% of the fares

With Uber, nobody really knows what percentage of the fare they get because they can, I've had drivers say like, yeah I've done rides Denver to you know, the DIA Airport and sometimes I get 60, sometimes I get a hundred, like there's no, I guess transparency with it.

Jeff: Mmm-hm.

Serina: And I can only speak to you know what I'm told, but I just personally feel better about using Lyft and for those who don't know, Lyft also released an update to their service dog policy saying that an allergy or a fear of animals is not a valid reason to not pick up an individual with a service animal and I feel like that's a very strong policy, and that's telling you where they stand on that very clearly, and I'm not, I'm not sure if Uber has come out as strong as they did.

But that's all for a whole another podcast, you have to use all that when we talk about transportation.

[Laughter]

Jeff: No that's, that's good information because in my neck of the woods my wife uses Lyft, I use Uber and yet, I've been noticing that at certain peak times the price goes way up and other times it's low, and the waiting time changes, but you know, if it were two minutes, it's sometimes it's as low as thirty seven cents, but other times it's higher, you know, so things, I think it's the area you're in that really has, it makes a difference between which one you use, it is productivity because you got to get places and it's nice to know you can get there.

Serina: And on time and on your own time.

Jeff: Good.

Serina: But that was a really good guess that brought on a whole another discussion, I liked it.

[Laughter]

Serina: But honestly we're on the app right now.

Jeff: Ahh, zoom zoom.

[Laughter]

Serina: But part of my job is to train other people and to hold conference calls and things like that, and to my knowledge as far as like a true training platform where you can record and share your screen and things like that, I found that Zoom is the most accessible system out there that's also used by like companies all over the place.

I know Skype is out there, but I don't know if Skype lets you like record the calls and things like that, I don't, like independently, not by pushing it through a different software but just right in the program recording it and having that access to be able to share your screen and still use your PowerPoint effectively and things like that.

Jeff: Mm-hmm, and we're doing a neat thing for the first time here and we didn't know if we could do it but Hope sat beside us waiting patiently for us, but we figured it out and we're recording on two ends right now.

Serina: Unless I pushed the wrong button again which is very possible.

[Laughter]

Jeff: Another cliffhanger, stay tuned next week when we find out!

Serina: That will be our opener next week.

Guess what I actually did it right!

Jeff: You know, I'm starting to like Zoom because it's like I can't even tell you, you guys are here, because typically when we're using Skype in my headphones, I have this hiss when other people aren't talking so there's continuous hisses going on and then in the editing phase.

So Zoom's really good and I really like the feature where you can send an email and people can just click on the link and they connect right up.

Serina: Yep, it makes it really really easy.

Hope: So a question I have, you mentioned sharing your screen, how accessible is that with voiceover?

I heard through the grapevine that the voice-over will read actually what's on the screen.

I don't know if it's true or not?

Serina: So I haven't had a chance to test that because at work we don't use any Max, and then when I'm on a Zoom call and I am a participant I'm not usually on my iPhone.

Hope: Right.

Serina: So if you are leading the meeting and you're sharing your screen, it's actually pushing through a video of your screen, so it's almost like, I just imagine like a webcam watching your screen or whatever.

Hope: Right, so I would assume it's not accessible then.

Serine: Correct, but and I don't remember the keystroke, maybe Jeff knows, but I know in the latest major update to the OS on the Macs and iOS, you can have it essentially perform an OCR on the screen like live, with the software on the Mac, but I haven't had a chance to truly test that out just because I'm not usually on Apple devices when I'm participating.

The way that I work around that, because I do have to present to individuals that use screen readers as well sometimes, is I usually will send my PowerPoint out ahead of time so that they can follow along while they're listening to the meeting, but then they also have access to the chat panel and everything else, it's just the visual of the video that they're not quite having access to but I, I just send it out ahead of time.

Jeff: Yeah I haven't dug too deep into this, but Serina told me about Jonathan Mosen's book, and he did a full fledge book on using Zoom for calls and meetings and stuff like that, and yeah, I believe you can get that on Mosen's consulting on the website, and we'll put a link to that in the show notes.

Serina: Yeah the book is called "Meet Me Accessibly" and it's very current based on, because I listen to maybe four or five chapters so far, and it sounds like he recorded it maybe in June of 17 and he does a really good job of letting you hear the screen reader and how it interacts with everything and going through all the different settings and explaining what exactly it is that they all do.

Jeff: Yes he does he has quite a few books on Mosen's consulting so when you get there, just look around and he has tutorials on a lot of different topics, he's into the Mac, he's into, no not the Mac as much anymore, but he's into the PC, Microsoft.

Serina: All these plugs Jeff, you're going to need to get some royalties!

[Laughter]

Jeff: Hopefully I get their name right and their website right.

Another app that I have that I use and some people laugh at this, I use Dictionary Thesaurus Plus, and if you get the dictionary you can upgrade and you get, its a combination of Dictionary and Thesaurus Plus and I get the word of the day, and I'm just waiting to get that specific word to send Serina because she laughed at me when I talked about this app before.

But it's just kind of neat because in there, they have flashcards and I'm on the bottom, they're not labeled but I figured out what two of them are, flashcards, so I took insight today just when I was skipping around there and I made a flashcard so on one side it says insight, on the other side it says the definition, so someone could actually go through there if they have a 10 word list that need to know or learn, like they're in school and they could actually input the word, get the dictionary, and there's also a button that says go to page, so if you want more definition you can just click on it, brings it right to the dictionary page and it's just kind of a neat resource if you're into that you know.

If you want to know what words mean.

Serina: Well that could you, I mean you just brought up a good point though, that could be a really good study aid for somebody if you're in a class where there's a lot of maybe theories, or specific definitions you need to know, you could load all those in there and while you're on the bus or whatever kind of be going through those, probably a more fun way than just reading the book.

Jeff: Yeah and that's why I did it, like when I took Spanish, I made, I made note cards.

I took these note cards and I brailled on one side, and then on the other side I had some other Braille, the translation in English to what it was, so I could just go through, and people were like joking with me like, Oh flashcards, it's like it's something for the kids or something, but hey, it's a good learning tool because it's just repetitious and pretty soon it just starts coming to you.

Serina: Mmm-hmm.

Jeff: So I dug right in when I saw they had flashcards, I went wow!

So I really like that and it's, uh I think there's a fee for the upgrade, might be a few dollars but you can get download at all for free and test it and then in the in-app you can upgrade.

Serina: Nice!

Jeff: Well I think we got a handful of apps here that you know through experience we, we've been trying, we've been using and stuff.

Some of these apps if you find them useful click on the show notes, download them, check them out, and if you have any feedback or suggestions on the apps that you want us to do on our next show, give us a jingle, drop us an email at JobInsights@blindabilities.com, on Twitter at Job Insights VIP, and uh, let us know what you think.

Serina: What are we talking about next tiem John....John?

Wow!

Sorry!

[Laughter]

Jeff: Well Sarah!

[Laughter]

Jeff: What will our next one be on?

Serina: I don't know, we have so many topics, normally I'm like, let's take this, let's let Hope pick the next topic, no pressure!

Hope: No pressure yeah right mm-hmm!

Let's do transportation since we kind of talked a little bit about it in this one, that would make sense.

Serina: Getting to work.

Hope: Yeah, absolutely.

Serina: Perfect.

Jeff: Getting to work, school, college.

Hope: Yeah.

Jeff: There you go Sarah!

Serina: Stop it!

[Laughter]

Jeff: And if you want to contact Hope, she's on Twitter.

Serina: If you want people to have it?

Hope: Yeah my Twitter is Fidelco, capital F as in Foxtrot, I, D as in Delta, E, L, C, O, 4, the number four, ever.

My email address is hopepaulos@gmail.com, so hopepaulos@gmail.com.

Jeff: Well Hope thank you very much for coming on to Job Insights, it's really neat to have you and we're gonna have you back as soon as possible here for our next round table.

Hope: Thank you so much Jeff and Serina, it was wonderful being here.

I appreciate it!

Serina: Yep, you have a great day!

Hope: Thank you!

Jeff: Do you know it's nearly midnight and you said have a great day?

Serina: Well this will come out during the day.

[Laughter]

[Music]

Jeff: It was a real pleasure having Hope Paulos join us on the show today, all the way from Maine, and next week when we're talking about transportation all the way from New York we'll have Joe De Niro, so stay tuned to the next episode of Job Insights.

And a big shout-out to Chee Chau for his beautiful music and you can follow him on Twitter at lcheechau, as always thank you for listening, we hope you enjoyed, and until next time bye-bye

[Multiple voices]

When we share what we see through each other's eyes, We can then begin to bridge the Gap between the limited expectations and the realities of Blind Abilities.

Jeff: For more podcast with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on twitter at BlindAbilities, download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that's two words, or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com, thanks for listening.