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For blind people, computers and smartphones are a relatively mature product category, with plenty of choice available. Household appliances are a different matter, and the problem can be more difficult depending on where in the world you live. When our microwave gave up the ghost recently, I was confronted with very few useable choices. On this week’s episode, I’ll talk about the difficulties we face, and tell you about the appliance we ended up with thanks to some great advice. I’m also interested in your own experiences trying to find useable devices like microwaves, dishwashers, washing machines and fridges. What difficulties have you faced and how did you overcome them?

Currently, YouTube has an appalling video on its platform from a Lyft driver who actively tutors ride share drivers on how to avoid transporting service animals without being removed from the platform. It is full of mis information, and it blatantly encourages breaking laws in many countries. It needs to be taken down and I’m urging that we call on Google to take rapid action. Lyft also should deplatform this driver.

There’s good news to report as iOS 17 nears release. I’m finding it in quite reasonable shape now and am interested in your findings.

It’s a highly Mendez show this week as I catch up with Jack and Maryann Mendez at the NFB convention. Maryann talks about her work at Bookshare. We discuss the recent price increase, the many ways you can consume Bookshare content and much more. Jack discusses effectively teaching assistive technology, the future of accessibility and more.

Brian Hartgen joins us to demonstrate that actually, at least one notetaker product does a good job of searching for text across files. He’ll show us how it’s done on the BrailleSense from HIMS.

All this and much more in episode 245 of Living Blindfully.