If you do these convention coverage events long enough, well, you end up having some compromising audio and photos being taken of you as a result. Somewhere out there are pictures of Joe with his interview microphone near an odd place on eBot the Robot's chassis. And now the BBQ Crew has a few funny pictures of J.J. thanks to Blindspot Consulting, Inc. and their Accessible Photo Booth. Leah Shaull and Scott Tate walk J.J. through the process of taking the photos while they chat about the company's web remediation, kiosk access design and other services that they provide. Currently the Podcast Team is working out the demands of J.J.'s blackmail and what it would take not to release these photos. But in the meantime, you can find out more on the subject of Blindspot Consulting, by visiting their website
CSUN 2020 coverage is Brought to you by AFB AccessWorld.
For the latest news and accessibility information on mainstream and access technology, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offerings, access technology book reviews, and mobile apps, and how they can enhance entertainment, education and employment, log on to AccessWorld, the American Foundation for the Blind's free, monthly, online technology magazine. Visit www.afb.org/aw.
Transcript
We strive to provide an accurate transcription, though errors may occur.
Hide transcriptTranscribed By Grecia Ramirez
Direct from Anaheim, it’s blindbargains.com coverage of CSUN 2020, brought to you by AFB AccessWorld.
For the latest news and accessibility information on mainstream and access technology; Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offerings; access technology book reviews and mobile apps and how they can enhance entertainment, education, and employment, log onto AccessWorld, the American Foundation for the Blind’s free monthly online technology magazine, www.afb.org/aw.
Now, here’s J.J. Meddaugh.
J.J. MEDDAUGH: CSUN 2020. I’m in a corner of the second Exhibit Hall. It’s always interesting to find different and unique representations of accessibility. I’m about to have my picture taken by an accessible photo booth. I’m being laughed at already. That’s Scott Tate, Leah Shaull with Blindspot.
SCOTT TATE: You got it.
JM: Right?
ST: Exactly.
JM: And we’re going to go through this and then explain how this all works.
Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast.
ST: Thank you.
LEAH SHAULL: Thanks for having us.
ST: Appreciate it. Appreciate it, J.J.
JM: I think you can tell who is Scott and who is –
ST: Yeah.
JM: -- Leah by the voices.
ST: We wanted – J.J., we want to do something fun. We wanted folks to come in and be able to at least have some memories, take some pictures, do some fun things, and showcase some accessible audio-nav technology. JAWS kiosk drives all this. So you can come in JAWS kiosk, and the screen reader will tell you everything you’re doing. Fully accessible photo booth; right?
JM: Sure. So how does this work, the photo booth?
ST: No problem. No problem. So we have two ways of using it. We have a regular standard QWERTY keyboard. We also have an audio-nav navigation pad in front of us. In theory, I could walk up, plug my headphones in, and it literally will start talking to me out loud, which is -- if you want me to – you want to me to get it going?
JM: Let’s do it.
ST: All right. All right. So I’m going to go ahead and –
JM: I’m going to face the radio, so this will be interesting.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: No prior items.
LS: I know. I know.
ST: So –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: The current item is B-l-n-d-s-p-t accessibility –
ST: So what it’s doing is it’s reading us the screen of the photo booth.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: -- press the right arrow key to move to the next item.
ST: Giving us the instructions to go ahead and press the audio-nav right key, which, on the keyboard, is tab –
JM: Okay.
ST: -- so I’m going to hit tab.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Start.
JM: Let’s let –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Press the middle key to activate.
ST: Okay.
JM: I was about to say, let’s let it speak so we can –
ST: Sure.
JM: -- don’t talk over it a lot. Perfect. Awesome.
ST: No problem.
JM: All right.
ST: It says “start” here, so I’m going to go ahead and activate.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Enter your contact information.
ST: Okay. And what it’s going to –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Press the right arrow key to move to the next item.
ST: It’s going to give me the chance to fill out my name and my Email. Obviously, the pictures have to go somewhere.
JM: Yup.
ST: So I’m going to go ahead and follow the experience.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: First name, left paren –
ST: You want me to fill out your name, J.J.? You want these in your inbox?
JM: Sure.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: -- type in text. JJ. Last name, left paren –
ST: M-e-d--
JM: Yeah. It’s on my name tag. There you go. M-e-d-d-a-u-g-h.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: M-e-d-d -- d-e-l – l-e-d-d.
ST: I had to look again.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: -- e-a-g-h.
LS: There’s a lot going on.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Email, left paren, required, right paren, edit --
JM: Let’s use feedback@blindbargains.com.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: -- type in text: F-e-e-d-b-a-c-k@b-l-i-n-d-b-a-r-g-a-i-n-s dot c-o-m.
JM: Oh. Our transcriptionist is going to love this.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: By checking here, you agree to your photo being taken –
ST: Yeah. All right.
JM: Okay.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: -- and the use of your photo for Blindspot marketing, left paren, required, right paren, not ticked.
ST: Okay.
JM: All right. Fine.
ST: Now, I’m going to go ahead and –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Start photo booth. Press the middle key to activate.
ST: Okay. Here we go.
JM: Okay. All right.
ST: So I’m going to hit start. It’s going to count down.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Get ready to take your photos.
JM: How do I know where to look?
ST: Three –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: -- press the right arrow key to move to the next item.
ST: That’s the tough one. You’re right at it.
JM: Okay.
ST: Just make a funny face. Three, two, one, gone. Cheese. And last one, last one. Three, two, one, cheese. There we go.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: -- view my photos. Press the right arrow key to move to the next item.
JM: So I have questions here.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Email my photos. Press the middle key to activate.
JM: Okay.
ST: So I’m going to go ahead and – I’m going to go ahead and activate –
JM: Okay.
ST: I’m going to send the Email.
JM: All right. And then we can talk about the experience.
ST: Okay.
LS: Yes.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Thank you. Press the right arrow –
JM: You’re welcome.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: -- key to move to the next item.
JM: Okay. So that’s a really interesting process. Obviously, you know, going through that, I already had questions and suggestions for –
ST: Sure.
JM: -- ideas, one of which was, you know, have you thought about adding some sort of beacon or whatever to help people point their face at said camera because --
ST: We have. We put this together really quickly before the conference.
JM: Oh, gosh. Absolutely.
ST: We were thinking of something beeping and –
JM: Yup.
ST: -- something making noise. Something literally giving you at least some kind of audible feedback. Beep, beep, beep. Something like that; right? Great suggestion.
JM: Well, and also, I’m holding a recorder, and normally, I would have oriented myself to said photo booth and probably had some idea of which way I should be facing anyway; right?
ST: Sure. Absolutely.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: B-l-n-d-s-p-t –
ST: And it just started over again, ready to take pictures again, so --
JM: All right. Well –
ST: What else can we answer for you, J.J.?
JM: So let’s delve into more of your company and what you do. I was talking to Leah earlier about you do things for airports. You just implemented some stuff with Frontier Airlines, for instance.
ST: We did. We did. We actually – you’re – if you fly through the Denver airport now, you’ll use our software. We build kiosk software. And besides that, we build accessibility -- or accessible software for just about everything; right?
The Vispero guys tasked us to build their accessible escape room sign up. They tasked us to build their trivia application. So if you walk around the conference a little bit and you use some of the things that they have showing at their booths, they basically paid us to do that. We’re the software company that builds all these accessible utilities.
JM: So JAWS has their kiosk software.
ST: Uh-huh.
JM: How much additional – if a company or an organization wants to implement accessibility, how much does that bump up the cost?
ST: You mean – well, JAWS is the – obviously the screen readers we know –
JM: Yup.
ST: -- right? JAWS kiosk is the screen reader. We’re building the interface right on top of JAWS kiosk; right? So we’re building buttons and text and visual experiences that are going to get read perfectly by JAWS kiosk through the experience; right? How much does it bump up the cost? It’s no more expensive than simply building a non-accessible interface, per se. We’re just building websites, we’re building applications, same price; right? JAWS makes it easier for us.
JM: Right. And of course, you and I know that it’s so much better to build it from the beginning this way than to try to do it later on and –
ST: Absolutely. Yeah.
JM: -- retro fit everything.
ST: Absolutely. Yup.
JM: Besides Frontier, any other notable clients or places that we can find –
ST: We are –
JM: -- your experience?
ST: Yeah. Yeah. We are building the 2020 Japan Olympics mobile app –
JM: Oh.
ST: -- right now as we speak. One of their – it’s actually USOPC – they call it USOPC, which -- U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. The – obviously, we know the Olympics hopefully will happen in Japan –
JM: Yeah.
ST: -- here in July, so we’re building the mobile app. One of their blind athletes actually – believe it or not – actually sued the Olympic Committee. So we are rebuilding their mobile app from scratch as we speak.
JM: Yeah. How do you find that balance between getting new business organically by really convincing companies that accessibility is vital and important as opposed to the whole, you know, scare tactics, like, you’re going to get sued if you don’t do this?
ST: We talk about this a lot. We sponsor a meetup every month in our office. The Denver Accessibility meetup, we actually sponsor. This is a – pretty much a regular topic of conversation. We preach just, you know, better accessible design is better design. So regardless of the fact that you’re going to build accessibility into your design, if you do build accessibility into your design, it’s a better design for everybody. Generally, they say it’s less expensive to build, it’s less expensive to maintain because it follows practical design principles for everybody.
JM: Okay. Very cool. So you’re a full-stack developer, you can do – you guys just do all sorts of accessibility work, you do remediation. Anything else that we should know about or –
ST: You know, you see a lot of our technologies. We just do – we do pure remediations. We’ve done pure -- basically website and application remediations for the big banks, with Wells Fargo, the MasterCards out there. You’ll see us literally fixing sites. We come to conferences like this, and we see a lot of booths who sell tools.
JM: Uh-huh.
ST: There’s a booth right in front of us, and they sell tools, they sell scanning tools. When they come in and they scan sites or they scan applications and they find problems, they call us to fix them. So we’re the ones that fixes all – actually fixes all the problems.
JM: And to me, kiosks are just a little more fun than just doing WCAG, website stuff all day.
ST: Especially at conferences; right?
JM: Yeah. And the photo booths. They were fun.
LS: So much fun.
JM: You need to get them to one of those – the mall photo booths, you know, like where they have the funny pictures and everything and –
LS: Oh, absolutely.
JM: -- and have all those described.
ST: Yeah. We were trying; right? So behind you is a backdrop that we – that says Blindspot. Our logo is a penguin with an eye patch on.
JM: Okay.
ST: So it’s a blind penguin with an eye patch on; right? And if you flip the backdrop around, it’s a green screen. And the idea was exactly what you said. You know, J.J., take some pictures in front of the green screen, and the last page of the photo booth so – where do you want to be? Want to be on the moon?
JM: Right.
ST: Want to be on the beach? We just weren’t able to get that far before the conference.
JM: Yeah. It’s very –
ST: -- so --
JM: -- can’t get it all done. But that gives you -- hey. You can do it for next year.
ST: Absolutely.
JM: You can outdo yourself now; right?
ST: Yup. If you’re here next year, we’ll take a picture of you on the moon. How about that?
JM: Oh, boy. All right.
LS: And we’ll have karaoke.
ST: Yeah.
JM: All right. Well, if people want to get more information and contact you all, what’s the best way to do it?
ST: Blndspt.com, website. Info@blndspt.com, Email address. Blindspot’s spelled with seven letters. It’s B-l-n-d-s-p-t. All you got to remember is it fits on a license plate.
JM: Perfect. Thank you so much.
ST: Sure. Thank you, J.J. Appreciate it.
LS: Thank you.
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Joe Steinkamp is no stranger to the world of technology, having been a user of video magnification and blindness related electronic devices since 1979. Joe has worked in radio, retail management and Vocational Rehabilitation for blind and low vision individuals in Texas. He has been writing about the A.T. Industry for 15 years and podcasting about it for almost a decade.
