A change that Apple introduced with the first beta of iOS 17 back in June is going viral this week. As part of a number of changes to the Phone app and the calling experience, Apple has relocated the positioning of the red "End" button. The change, perhaps unsurprisingly, is drawing quite a bit of criticism on social media.
@news I do not understand why they are changing the location of the end button. My philosophy is, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Not only that, but when I end a call or pick it up, I just do a two finger double tap, but if I’m not mistaken, that gesture is specific to voiceover users.
@maerlynofmiria@boogiechild@Willpogor
I hear you. We all mourned the loss of the headphone jack here at TTT as well. 🪦 It took some time, but our trusty Lightning Port to 3.5mm headphone jack converter got us through for awhile. And then? We just couldn't take it anymore. So we went wireless. And Air Pods became the standard for all of us. Which was really weird. At first. Now I'm not sure I could go back. - Aaron Di Blasi, Publisher 📰
This is the Slinger, a new accessory for your smartphone that adds an easy-to-use retractable strap, that can be neatly tucked away when not in use. This strap, which comes in a wide variety of colors and materials, allows the user to safely use their phone hands-free! The Slinger even holds the phone in the perfect position for hands-free phone calls.
@news every phone lanyard has failed for my needs but this one looks like a real solution!!!
edit: having purchased, i'd want to warn folks that the shipping was about $10. while the total cost is still comparable to other quality solutions, it was more than i was expecting, considering it seems like they should be able to flat rate it. this way, folks won't be surprised, as apparently that is a huge reason people end up not purchasing. so go in expecting shipping to be a bit!
@news i like his point about it helping with @AiraVI considering far too many of my minutes are spent trying to point my phone at the street so the person can see correctly
@news@datasciencejobs My bad I have been following the #datascience hash tag so that is why I am seeing all these posts in my home feed without following the account. I forgot about it. Sorry for the inconvenience.
As of this writing, ChatGPT is still text-in, text-out only. GPT-4 was supposed to expand on this by adding image processing to allow it to generate text based on images, but OpenAI has yet to release this feature. This is where MiniGPT-4 comes in.
@news Oh yeah, you're right, it is 13B too. I can't wait until screen readers get to use these API's for stuff like this. Then the fun will really begin!
@devinprater Couldn't agree with you more. Let me know if you come across any updates that might be worth sharing. I'll be sure to do the same. Really appreciate the ability to converse with someone else passionate about both accessibility and AI. Or should we just start calling it Assistive Intelligence? 😲🦯🤖
How To Access ChatGPT As A Person Who Is Blind or Low Vision: A Comprehensive Guide | Aaron Di Blasi | Publisher | Top Tech Tidbits https://www.toptechtidbits.com/165.html
The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) has greatly transformed the way we interact with technology. One such AI, ChatGPT, can hold meaningful and complex conversations, which can be a powerful tool for everyone, including people who are blind or have low vision. This article will provide a comprehensive guide on how a blind or ...
@devinprater@queenslight You're both right. And I will update the wording of the article to reflect that. Devin is correct that, depending upon your hardware / software setup, your screen reader may or may not automatically read out the response. Trenton is also correct that within some setups, it does so flawlessly. Article updated as of this communication. Thank you both for the feedback. - Aaron Di Blasi, Publisher 🙏
Publisher (Di Blasi): While we've heard (through the access vine) that this app is accessible, we have not yet tested it ourselves. Sighted or not, if you try this app please consider sharing your feedback with us. The app is free. This is just ChatGPT placed behind either an audio or video avatar. It's just a different way to interact with AI.
Podcast Voiceover Battle Royale: Human Versus AI. One Podcast. 4 Voices. Listen To The Difference. | Aaron Di Blasi | Top Tech Tidbits https://www.toptechtidbits.com/167.html
Is the current state of voice cloning and synthetic speech ready to take over your podcast?
We don't think so, but we do think that it's starting to get really good.
So we put together this Audio Battle Royale, so that Top Tech Tidbits readers could hear the difference for themselves.
@queenslight Thanks so much for sharing this Trenton. How incredibly cool! Where did this piece come from? Is it a clip from an Eleven Labs podcast of their own? Just curious. Either way thanks so much for the share. I'm so glad this got the attention of so many. I think it was a question on a lot of people's minds (us included), and being able to hear the current state of the technology in a fully mixed podcast really made all the difference. - Aaron Di Blasi
Publisher (Di Blasi): I believe it is now safe to say that the age-old ALT text dilemma has finally been flipped on its head. That's right. Humans don't need to describe images anymore. Why? Because they can now describe themselves in far greater detail than any human being ever would or could. And, in a unique twist of ALT text fate, the ALT text itself can now be used to "CREATE" the image!
@news There's also another website which describes images which still works. It's not quite as good as the Mini-GPT4 one was when it worked, but it's still pretty good and gives good details of images. The address is https://llava.hliu.cc/
@news Well I found out what the problem was. For some reason the address I was using, although it was doing the same thing, is not the same address as the one in your article. I've clicked on the one in your article, and the drop image link is coming up no problem, just like it used to on the old address I was using until a couple of weeks back. I;ve now bookmarked this new one in Chrome so I can use it on both my computer and iPhone.
Touch screen card machines are making blind and visually impaired people's lives more difficult, with some people having to disclose their bank card's pin number to staff in shops and restaurants.
@news Oh, I understand. I'm dreaming of a world where these sorts of accessibility barriors are not even a consideration because accessibility is so normalized that everything by default exists to cader to everyone.
@devinprater You know Devin, that's a really great question. One that I had myself as I coded this submission from Freedom Scientific. I will reach out to Elizabeth Whitaker, who provides these tips, and ask her for clarification. My guess is that it's a general JAWS tip that should work with any email client, regardless of where the email originated, or ends up, but we'll find out for sure. 🦅
@devinprater I'm sorry. I was wrong. Freedom Scientific says the tip is currently specific to Outlook, though they "have plans to work on extending it to other platforms in future." So we have changed the title from "JAWS Power Tip" to "JAWS with Microsoft Office Power Tip" to eliminate any confusion. Great catch Devin. As always. Thank you. 🦅
On May 27, 2023 I released a post titled, Upload An Image And Have It Described For You: How To Try MiniGPT-4 Right Now (https://toptechtidbits.com/166.html).
I received some incredible feedback and questions around this piece, particularly from persons who are blind or low vision, so I wanted to let everyone know about another AI resource that you can also use to describe images right now.
@karaokequeen85 Yes it most certainly will. Like OpenAI itself has promised, Virtual Volunteer will bring true multi-modal functionality to the masses. Multi-modal means not just text in, text out, but image in, text out, and text in, image out. Maybe even text or image in and video out. Or vice versa. In essence, technology is currently in the process of gaining our senses. And with them the understanding to use them. Be My Eyes gets serious kudos for being so quick to adopt this new tech. 🙏
How To Access ChatGPT As A Person Who Is Blind or Low Vision: A Comprehensive Guide | Aaron Di Blasi | Top Tech Tidbits https://www.toptechtidbits.com/165.html
ChatGPT can hold meaningful and complex conversations, which can be a powerful tool for everyone, including people who are blind or have low vision.
This article will provide a comprehensive guide on how a blind or visually impaired person can access and use ChatGPT for the first time.
@news This is a great app and will be very useful to all of us who are visually impaired. It’s completely accessible it’s free. The pop-ups are not annoying and the haptic feedback is great as a guide to use when searching.
Here are 10 innovative prompts aimed at demonstrating the capabilities of ChatGPT to improve the lives of people with various disabilities. Copy and paste any of the prompts below into ChatGPT.
You can access ChatGPT via the web or the official iPhone app which was just released on May 18, 2023 and now has built-in voice functionality. Learn more about the app and download it here: https://openai.com/blog/introducing-the-chatgpt-app-for-ios.
You can log into ChatGPT on the web at: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt. You will need to create a free account in order to login. There's a free tier that will let you experiment and a "Plus" tier for $20 a month. Hope this helps! :)
@news Oh, my heavens. How did I miss that you have this newsletter, as well? Clearly I need to get my RADAR checked. 😀 Thanks so much for posting this.
@DavidGoldfield Not to worry, your radar is working just fine my friend. AI-Weekly was just launched today. Well, the first issue of the newsletter was anyway. The website launched about a week and a half ago now but we've been working on the project since January 1, 2024. So glad you approve. And thank you so much for everything you continue to do via Tech-VI. Tidbits wouldn't be what it is without you and the Tech-VI list. Sincerely grateful for all you do. - Aaron Di Blasi, Publisher 🙏
The winner of Freedom Scientific's Next Big Thing contest has been announced. Freedom Scientific, a leading manufacturer of assistive technology for people with vision impairments, launched the innovative contest back in September to crowdsource new features for their renowned software products JAWS and ZoomText. Finalists' ideas included creating a JAWS Gym to help people get to know the numerous ...
@remixman So did we! But we also understand that they can only entertain so many great ideas at a time. But an app, aptly named "JAWS Gym," that walked new and existing users through the many shortcuts that JAWS has to offer, perhaps allowing one to "Level Up" to something like "MASTER JAWS CONTROLLER" would REALLY go a long way to helping people to better utilize JAWS. I think gamification makes learning fun. And easier. - Aaron Di Blasi, Publisher 📰🚀