Shownotes

The Milestone 311 accessible MP3 player is manufactured by Bones GmbH and will soon be sold by Independent Living Aids in the United States for $369. It was recently presented by Stephen Guerra on VIP Conduit’s Accessible Devices online voice conference.

At this time, in the opinion of this blind technology consumer, the Milestone 311 is overpriced for the feature set being offered. Here is a list of must-have features:

• Separate external microphone / line-in connector.
• Ability to monitor recordings as they are being made.
• Recording level adjustment.
• Recording bit rate adjustment.
• Pause function during recording.
• Replaceable batteries.

Check out these nice-to-have features:

• Ability to play DRM content such as Audible, Apple FairPlay and Microsoft Plays for Sure.
• USB 2.0 connectivity.
• Support for additional file formats such as Ogg Vorbis.
• DAISY support.

Though this device is surely not going to be well suited to blind podcasters or others interested in making high quality digital audio recordings, it does have great potential for the typical blind technology consumer who simply wants an accessible way to listen to their audio. With its current feature set, I estimate the Milestone 311 should be worth a price tag of between $200 and $250. While we must understand that the price of specialized assistive technology such as this device is naturally going to be higher than similar units for the mainstream sighted market, we must also expect a similar amount of features, flexibility, functionality and reliability as is currently enjoyed by sighted users of products such as Apple’s largely inaccessible iPod lines.

Thanks go to Stephen Guerra for his featuring this podcast during the Accessible Devices presentation. Absolutely no offense in this reporting is intended toward the manufacturer, Independent Living Aids, Stephen Guerra or anyone else.

Download and Listen

Shownotes

Listen as I experiment with CastBlaster and play a promo for Todd Cochrane’s new Podcaster News Network service. Thanks go to CastBlaster Mike for his willingness to work with the blind community, striving toward CastBlaster accessibility.

Download and Listen

We thank VIP Conduit for enabling a brief discussion of the Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition on the Accessible Devices Sunday afternoon presentation. You are all encouraged to visit this online community of blind and visually impaired users.

We are moving Blind Access Journal away from the nu7i.blogspot.com address. Please change your browser bookmarks and other pointers to http://www.blindaccessjournal.com to stay up to date with all that is happening on the journal.

We are now asking for feedback on the second draft of the cover letter accompanying the Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition when it is sent to Dr. Eric Schmidt and Google’s Board of Directors. Please review the letter below, then send all constructive criticisms and suggestions to editor (at) blindaccessjournal.com. We look forward to your participation in this critical endeavor.

Over the past two decades, the Internet in general, and the World Wide Web in particular, have changed the lives of blind and visually impaired people for
the better. Many blind people around the world, through the use of synthesized speech and/or Braille output assistive technology, can now access
vast amounts of text-based and auditory information independently, like never before. Google’s main search engine page, with it’s rather accessible and
straight forward layout, is a primary gateway for many blind people to
effectively sift through, and thereby gain access to, the wealth of
information brought forth by this new empowering technological age. We in the blind community of Internet users, wholeheartedly thank Google for this; however, there is a considerable barrier looming in our midst, implemented
in a variety of Google’s newer services, which effectively denies independent access to the very information, resources, and online services that Google
has the potential to offer, to both blind and sighted users alike.

We all know that there are aspects of the Internet that impede its usefulness, including spam and the robots that seek to propagate it. The blind community
detests spam, too, and sympathizes with the need to do something about it. However, the graphical verification system introduced on some of
Google’s sites, which requires a user to visually read and correctly
interpret a picture, and to then enter the string of graphical
characters into a separate edit box, has, inadvertently, shut out
blind and visually impaired people from many Google services. As this is inconsistent with Google’s mission, I am certain you will want to deal with this problem
expeditiously.
I am writing to let you know that thousands of blind and sighted Internet users have signed the enclosed Google Word Verification Accessibility online petition.
We are kindly asking you to please follow Google’s mission statement, to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,”
by adding an accessible alternative to the visual word verification, also known as CAPTCHA, which is currently implemented on the web pages of Blogger,
GMail, and almost all other Google provided services.
Many of us in the blind community stand willing, ready, and able to assist your talented developers in devising and testing a workable solution, such as
those access alternatives already adopted and implemented by Pay Pal, Hotmail, Microsoft Passport, PR Web, and an increasing number of other prominent
services.

Not only can Google have the opportunity to expand its user-base by
making it’s websites fully accessible for blind and visually impaired
users, but doing so would also help Google further expand its
leadership in the search and advertising markets, as well as serving
as a catalyst to encourage more sites to open their market to this
often overlooked customer-base. Since Google is an acknowledged leader in providing an increasing number of services, adopting a solution to the access problem may be very useful
in gaining positive publicity for Google, and could serve as an outstanding example to the public, and to a wide audience of website owners and designers,
to bring increased awareness of this accessibility problem.
We, in the blind and the sighted communities alike, sincerely Thank you for your genuine consideration of this urgent matter, and we look forward to a prompt
affirmative response from you in the very near future.

We thank Larry Skutchan for covering the Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition by posting my recorded special report message to the Blind Cool Tech podcast.

To: Google Inc.
We, the undersigned, ask Google Inc. to “do no evil” and follow their mission statement to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” by promptly adding accessibility to their visual word verification scheme …

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We thank Jeff Bishop for his return to podcasting and the excellent coverage of the Google Word Verification Accessibility Petition on The Desert Skies Podcast.