Something I've been wondering about lately is whether automation could make some assistive technology setups less tedious without actually interfering with the technology itself.

There are a lot of little tasks around the main tool: copying information between apps, sorting files, creating reminders, updating records, sending notifications, or starting the same sequence every day. None are particularly difficult, but repeating them constantly can get annoying.

I've been experimenting with a few automation approaches to see how practical this is. Visual workflow builders were useful for mapping things out, while more technical options gave me more control. The simpler tools worked well for basic tasks, and some newer options handled workflows with more steps without needing everything to finish immediately.

I think the important part is keeping the person in control. Automation can handle repetitive computer work while anything requiring context or judgment stays manual.

The usefulness probably depends heavily on the individual setup too. Something that saves a lot of effort for one person might not matter at all to someone else.

Has anyone here experimented with automation alongside their assistive technology? What task ended up being surprisingly useful to automate?

HP doesn**'**t respect blind and visually impaired people; if you told a dog to program a screen reader in the BIOS, it would do it.

I’m handicapped and mostly confined to my bedroom because the bathroom is only a few feet away. When I leave the house, I use a walker for short distances (about 100’-200’) and otherwise use a wheelchair. I have severe balance problems because of Ataxia. It also causes me to walk wobbly and sometimes have tremors.

I want to start building up my walking endurance by gradually increasing my steps a little each day inside the house. Because of the wobbliness, I’ve never had good luck with pedometers being accurate. And since I need to hold onto the walls, furniture, etc. it doesn’t work well for me to try carrying my phone. Does anyone have any suggestions or experience with pedometers that can be worn around the ankle or a fitness watch that are very accurate with the steps?

With the rapid pace of technological development worldwide, the evolution of BIOS interfaces to UEFI systems, and their subsequent development, blind individuals are being deprived of full control over their devices. I urge companies to take action and develop a BIOS that meets the needs of the blind. The deliberate neglect by these companies has reached a point where it is unjust for blind people to remain trapped in a prison of independence.

Body: I've spent a lot of time with JAWS over the years and kept notes on things that weren't obvious when I started — especially around virtual cursor navigation and setting up scripts to speed up repetitive tasks. A few things that made a real difference for me:

Learning the virtual cursor vs. PC cursor distinction early saves a ton of confusion — most navigation frustration comes from not knowing which mode you're in.

JAWS scripts can automate things you do constantly (like navigating a specific site's layout) — worth learning even basic scripting once you're comfortable with the shortcuts.

Combining audio and braille feedback, rather than relying on one alone, made multitasking (like proofreading while listening) much smoother.

I ended up writing all of this into a full guide since I couldn't find one that covered setup through advanced use in one place. Happy to share it if anyone wants it, and happy to just answer JAWS questions here too.

Looking for wheelchair users to help test RollSense

Hi everyone,

We’re building RollSense, a mobile app designed to help wheelchair users understand how sidewalks and outdoor routes actually feel to travel on — not just whether they are technically marked as wheelchair accessible.

The idea is simple:

Your phone is securely mounted or fixed in a stable position on your wheelchair while you travel. Using the phone’s built-in motion sensors, RollSense measures things like vibration, repeated bumps, instability, and overall ride quality.

Keeping the phone firmly attached to the wheelchair is important for the test. If the phone moves around independently — for example in a loose pocket, bag, or hand — its sensors may record your body or phone movement instead of the movement caused by the road surface. A wheelchair phone mount is ideal, but another secure and consistent mounting position may also work.

Over time, the app should be able to tell you things like:

• which parts of a route were smooth or rough,
• which routes were more comfortable for your wheelchair,
• whether a slightly longer route may be significantly easier to travel,
• build a personalized mobility map based on your own rides,
• and help build a shared community map, allowing other wheelchair users to see how smooth or difficult a route is before traveling it themselves.

The long-term goal is to make route planning more personal. A road that works well for one wheelchair may be uncomfortable or difficult for another, so we want RollSense to learn from real wheelchair users rather than rely only on generic accessibility labels.

We’re looking for early testers

We’re currently preparing a private testing version of RollSense for iOS and Android.

The testing app is not available yet, but we’re looking for wheelchair users who would be interested in helping us once the private test opens.

Testing will mainly involve taking a few short rides with your phone securely mounted or fixed to your wheelchair in the same position throughout the ride, then giving a quick rating afterward about how the route felt.

The app may collect data such as:

• accelerometer and gyroscope readings,
• GPS/location during the test ride,
• speed and motion information,
• wheelchair type,
• phone mounting position,
• your own comfort/roughness rating.

This data will be used to understand whether smartphone sensors can reliably distinguish smooth, rough, and difficult route segments and to improve RollSense’s ride-quality system.

We’ll clearly explain what data is collected before anyone participates, and participation will be completely voluntary.

Thank you for helping us build it

Anyone who completes the early testing program will receive:

RollSense Premium lifetime access for free

as a thank-you for helping us build and validate the product from the beginning.

You’ll also be part of our original Founding Tester group, and your feedback will directly influence how RollSense works before public launch.

If you use a manual wheelchair, power wheelchair, or mobility scooter and would be interested in testing RollSense, please contact us at:

rollsenseapp@gmail.com

You can email us now even though the private test is not ready yet. We’ll add you to the tester list and contact you as soon as the iOS/Android closed testing builds are available.

Questions, concerns, criticism, and suggestions are also very welcome. We especially want to hear from people who regularly deal with rough pavement, slopes, camber, bad curb transitions, cobblestones, or routes that are technically “accessible” but unpleasant or difficult in practice.

Thank you!

If you do, what is your story, why did you choose this category?

Hi.
I've been deaf blind all my life I now can only see extremely bright lights like the sun and I have severe hearing loss. I'm 16 so I'm pretty good at tech. I just wanted to see what tech was out there for us deaf blind people because I've never met another deaf-blind person and I don't know whats all out there for us so I figured I would ask y'all.

How have I never heard of real-time text (RTT) before today? Stumbled upon this completely by accident. I wanted to share because I know phone calls are a major obstacle for us, and this definitely seems like something that could help.

Edited to Add:

The rabbit hole continues. Samsung Galaxy has a feature called text call that is basically the same thing except an automated voice will answer ask the caller why they are calling after you pick up and convert what you type afterwards into speech. Here's an article about how to use it if interested: click here

Hi everyone 👋

I’m a student working on an assistive-technology project involving smart glasses for blind and low-vision users.

The original idea was pretty simple:

>

But the more I think about it, the more I realize there’s a huge problem with that approach:

I’m not blind. So how do I know which problems are actually worth solving?

I don’t want to build a pair of “cool AI glasses” that looks impressive in a presentation but becomes useless in real life.

I want to hear from the people who actually live with these problems.

🦯 Let’s start with navigation

We often hear about white canes, guide dogs, GPS, smartphone apps, and environmental sounds.

But what do these tools still NOT solve for you?

When you're walking somewhere, what is the moment where you think:

>

Maybe it's finding a specific entrance.

Maybe it's understanding what's happening in an unfamiliar building.

Maybe it's crossing a complicated area.

Maybe it's knowing whether you've passed the place you're looking for.

Maybe it's something completely different.

What is your biggest everyday navigation frustration?

And something I'm especially interested in:

👂 How important is sound to your navigation?

I've read and heard that environmental sounds can provide a huge amount of information when navigating.

So I'd love to know:

What do you actually listen for when walking?

Traffic? Footsteps? Voices? Echoes? Doors? Public announcements? Something else?

And would an AI device talking constantly be helpful or actually make things worse by covering up those sounds?

🤔 But here's the bigger question...

What if navigation isn't even the biggest problem?

Forget the glasses for a moment.

Forget AI.

Forget my project.

What other everyday problem caused by blindness/low vision frustrates you the most?

It could be something incredibly simple:

Finding something you've put down.

Reading a label.

Identifying an object.

Cooking.

Shopping.

Using technology.

School/work.

Knowing what's happening visually in a room.

Recognizing people.

Knowing which button or control you're touching.

Or something that people who aren't blind would probably never think about.

🔥 Here's what I'm REALLY looking for

Tell me about the small annoying problem that happens over and over again.

The thing that seems insignificant to everyone else but makes your day harder.

Those are the problems I'm most interested in.

And please don't feel like you need to give me “good ideas.”

I'd actually like to hear the opposite too.

Have you tried an assistive device that sounded amazing but was completely useless in practice?

What made you stop using it?

Was it inaccurate?
Too slow?
Too expensive?
Uncomfortable?
Too much audio?
Too complicated?
Not reliable enough?
Or did it simply solve a problem you didn't really have?

One last question:

If you could magically fix ONE problem in your everyday life with technology, what would you choose?

I'm not looking for a perfect answer.

I'm looking for the real answer.

Even if it's something tiny.

Because my goal isn't to make the most advanced glasses.

It's to find a problem actually worth solving.

Thank you to anyone willing to share. Every honest answer could change the direction of this project. 🙏

Hey guys, so I’m a legally blind adult living in Philadelphia PA and I am trying to find mobility instruction. I used to navigate using my vision with GPS apps but can no longer do that. I was wondering if anybody knows about resources forgetting ONM instruction. BBVS has a waitlist of six months. I want to get to the point where I can have full awareness of directions and street names and be able to take buses and trains independently. Even if people don’t have specific advice, I welcome people to share their overall experiences. What are realistic expectations as a blind person to navigate? Do I need to be shown a specific place in route by an instructor every time I want something new or is it even possible to navigate a place that I have never been to before just with technology and the proper apps

What assistive technology do y’all use for working on your computer/laptop? Has anyone here used something like an eye tracker or head tracker for hands free computer use? My hands are in bad shape right now and all the assistive technology out there is expensive so I want to get some insight first. Thanks!

I've been on wispr since early 2025. I was one of the people recommending it to everyone. for the first 6-7 months it was genuinely one of the best tools I'd ever used.

something changed. over the last few months:

accuracy has crept down. more word swaps, dropped phrase endings, occasional hallucinated words. not catastrophic but the error rate is higher than it was.

"taking longer than usual" went from rare to multiple times a day.

the March outage hit me during a deadline. cloud-only with zero offline fallback means my work stopped completely for almost 2 hours.

the iOS app is unreliable. crashes a few times a week, still clips the first couple seconds of audio - that bug was reported in March and hasn't been fixed.

I found out about the screenshot and keystroke logging stuff recently. I work with sensitive data and it bothers me more than it probably should.

I'm not rage-quitting. when wispr works it's still excellent. but I've started keeping willow voice and superwhisper as backups because I can't afford to have my primary dictation tool go down with no fallback.

I'm posting this here because I want wispr to get better. the product I signed up for in 2025 was incredible. the product I'm using today is noticeably worse. please fix the existing bugs before shipping new features.

is anyone else seeing this decline or is my setup somehow unusual?

I'm designing a final-year major project: a BLE-based assistive navigation system for visually impaired people in railway stations.

The basic idea is to place low-power BLE beacons at key navigation points—stairs, lifts, turns, platform entrances, exits, etc. A wearable ESP32 detects these beacons and provides haptic/audio cues such as "turn left", "lift ahead", or "take the staircase."

For the first prototype, the system will use predefined routes: the user enters the station, receives the relevant instructions from the beacons, and subsequent beacons act as checkpoints to confirm that they're following the route.

The more advanced version I'm considering is:

• A station is represented as a graph, where beacons are nodes and only physically walkable connections are edges.
• The wearable can obtain the station graph and run Dijkstra/A* locally to calculate a route to a requested destination.
• Beacons then act primarily as location checkpoints, allowing the wearable to detect whether the user is following the planned route and re-route if necessary.
• The graph can contain constraints such as closed lifts/stairs, inaccessible paths, platform boundaries, etc.
• A central station-management system would maintain the master graph and distribute updated versions to the infrastructure.
• I'm also exploring how battery-powered beacons could receive updates without requiring wired connectivity or internet on every beacon, potentially using a gateway/mesh-style approach.

Some questions I'm currently trying to solve:

1. How should the BLE beacon hardware be designed for low cost and long battery life?
2. What is the best way to distribute/update the station graph to many offline beacons?
3. How reliable is BLE/RSSI for checkpoint detection in a crowded railway environment?
4. How should the system handle failed/missing beacons and multiple nearby beacons?
5. Is BLE Mesh or another relay architecture actually appropriate here?
6. What important real-world failure cases am I overlooking?
7. Does this architecture make sense at all, or am I overengineering the problem?

I'm deliberately sharing this before finalizing the architecture. I'd really appreciate criticism from people experienced in BLE/RF, embedded systems, networking, IoT, accessibility, or indoor navigation.

I'm much more interested in what is wrong with this approach and what I haven't considered than in validation.