Kia ora Mosen At Largers.
I’m thrilled that my vision for Mosen At Large is at the moment truly being realised, where we discuss technology which plays an important part of our lives, but we also feature thought-provoking discussions about a variety of issues from a blindness perspective that you don’t get in other blindness-produced talk shows.
On the tech side, we’re following up our feature on the new Siri voices that will be in iOS 14.5 thanks to a listener, who points out how much better they sound if, even as a VoiceOver user, you use the iOS Speak Screen feature. I’ll show you this feature and explain why I use it regularly, and you’ll hear how much better Siri sounds when using it.
How would you feel if you suddenly found you couldn’t do the job you worked hard to get, because a much-trumpeted new feature locked your screen reader out of essential tasks? Cloudflare has launched a new service called Remote Browser Isolation that promises to do just that, because despite being provided with quality technical advice to make it accessible, they’ve launched it in an inaccessible state. I’m joined by Matt Campbell who explains the issues and why we should be concerned about it.
There’s more on ableist language including misuse of the word “blind”, thoughts on blind culture and what it means to be a blind person today.
Discussion on the importance of blind mentors to young blind people and new parents of blind children leads us into a sensitive but important issue. Sometimes, when a couple produces a blind child and the cause of blindness is found to be genetic, the couple might be counselled not to have any more blind children. Why? It’s a statement from medical professionals that having a blind child should be discouraged, assigning lesser value to the life of a blind child. Isn’t that a form of eugenics? Some blind couples who have genetic conditions that cause their blindness are actively discouraged by family members to produce blind children. Again, why? As someone who is blind due to an x-linked condition, I have the fortunate opportunity to have blind grandsons, and personally, I’m excited about it and the bond I would feel with that grandson. I’ll also be reading a story I recently came across from a province in India which claims it is the law that a family with a genetic condition that causes blindness must have every foetus tested for the condition and the pregnancy terminated if blindness is detected. What do you think? Is it wrong to knowingly bring a blind child into the world, or is it wrong to send signals that blind lives are of inferior value?
I’ve had a few requests to talk in depth about mindfulness and meditation. So this week, I’ll discuss how I found it, what it is and how to integrate it and other mind-enhancing techniques into your life. I’ve also prepared an extensive list of resources to help you on your meditation journey and will explain in the segment how to access them. I’ll lead you at the close of the session through a simple meditation. Note, if you’re not listening to the live show, the meditation segment will be on a separate episode of the podcast to be released next week, episode 113.
As usual, there’s a wide array of blindness and technology topics from listeners on which you may like to comment once you hear them.
If you want to raise something new, you’re very welcome.
Getting your contributions in ahead of time leaves you free to hear the show, and gives me a chance to organise them all, so go for it. Please don’t be shy, I’d love to hear from you. To contribute, send an email with an audio attachment or just written down to Jonathan at MushroomFM.com, or call the listener line, +18646066736, that’s 1-864-60Mosen.
The best way to hear Mosen At Large is when it airs live and in full. Catch it on Mushroom FM, either on the station itself or in the Mushroom FM club on Clubhouse, the Mosen At Large YouTube channel and the Mosen At Large Facebook page on Saturdays at 2 PM Eastern, that’s 7 PM in the UK. It will then be available in abridged form on the Mosen At Large podcast, available anywhere you get podcasts.
Thank you so much for listening and contributing to the show and see you soon for Mosen At Large.