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The seven stages of grief start at denial and end at acceptance. I am stuck somewhere in between. Never had a chance for denial. Waking up in the morning and the first thing I see is that I don't see pretty much kills any hope for denial. I also do not have the luxury of acceptance anytime soon. Life is and will be hard. So I'm stuck in between stages going from one stage to another back-and-forth with no chance to complete my grieving process. This is the most terrifying aspect of going blind.

Here is an easy way to permanently increase or decrease the voice speed of Fusion without wandering through the software setting option . Type Ctrl + Windows key + Alt + Page Up or Down to respectively increase or decrease Fusion voice speed. The change is permanent which means the voice speed will stay the same until you manually change it.

Latest news on Apple Music Classical… The service will be available through a downloadable app from the App Store. Unlike Apple Music, Classical will not be tethered to an operating system, which means the app will work with older iPhone model. So far, the app will work on iPhone 6 and newer models. Apple says iOS 15 is required, however. The interface will follow closely Apple Music’s design with a [possibly] new featured that are more adapted to classical music. The app should be out by March 28th. There are a few leaked pictures out there. Unfortunately these pictures have no text-description. I will update with details when they becomes available.

A very minor update with not much to talk about from an accessibility feature standpoint…. Which means the magnifier app that appeared on IOS 16 is still getting very hot during use. A small interesting thing tho… there is some code about the long awaited Apple Music Classical . An independent app from apple dedicated to classical music . Some of us could find this useful.

Hover text on iPad is broken and has been broken for a while. Hover text is an accessibility feature you can find on the setting app of your iPad . When activated, text located under tpointer or under the tip of your Apple Pencil enlarges in a separate window on your screen. it is a very useful function for llow vision individuals . Googling the issue on the internet shows 1000s of inquiries about the issue. Why does it take Apple so long to fix the issue ?

Android and Apple products all have their own accessibility gestures, both intuitive and easy to remember...As long as you stay within the same operating system. As intuative as they are, moving from one system to another requires learning new gestures. Same goes for text to speech features like VoiceOver (Apple) or TalkBack (Google). There also shouldn’t be patents associated to these kind of gestures and companies should not use these gestures as a way to keep the disabled within their own operating ecosystem. What do you think? Comment below.

Every Wednesday, we focus on one hotkey from Fusion to make interacting with your PC even faster than ever. Alf + Tab allows you to navigate from one open app to another. For example if you have Office Mail open on your PC and another window with MS Word, the hot key will bring alternatively each windows to the forefront of your screen everytime you press the keys. Usefull for copy-paste for example.

One of the reasons why Fusion does not exist for Apple product is that Apple usually does a good job. With accessibility . Almost all the features offered by Fusion on PC are available for free on any apple products. Almost but not all, Apple should work on cross hair. On Fusion, cross hair when activated follows the mouse pointer on the screen. Color, thickness and general design of the cross hair feature can be personalized . No such luck on any Apple product. Cross hair is very useful for low vision individuals especially those with narrow field of vision. You just canot miss the pointer with cross hair. And it is probably more efficient than incrasing the size of the pointer on the screen,

A very useful hotkey for Fusion users provides a way to zoom in and out without the need to use the Zoom/Fusion interface. The hotkey combination is CAPS LOCK + UP or DOWN key. UP will incrementally zoom in your screen focusing on where your mouse pointer is located. Remember to activate your keyboard to accept Fusion hotkeys first.

Happy last day of January! January is Braille Literacy Month! January 4th (World Braille Day) was Louis Braille's 214th birthday. He invented the six dot code we are able to use today. It's a universal code used for many different languages as well as music and math. We believe it is still important for students to learn in today's society. What tasks does braille make easier in your life?

The American Council of the Blind has a post-secondary scholarship opportunity coming up! The scholarships range from $2,000 to $7,500. To be eligible, “applicants need to be legally blind, maintain a 3.0 GPA to be eligible for most scholarships, be a full-time student or a part time student who works at least 32 hours per week, and be involved in their school and local community.” The application is due February 14th, 2023 at 11:59pm (CST). Click here for more information and to apply.

Last month was Diabetic Eye Disease Awareness Month. Diabetes is the most common factor of adult vision loss and the number one cause of adult blindness. We wanted to share a few prevention tips from the National Eye Institute. (You can find more of their resources by clicking here.) We agree that it is extremely important, in all cases, to have your eyes checked regularly by an optometrist. You can also benefit from following the acronym TRACK. T: Take your prescribed medications. R: Reach and maintain a healthy weight. A: Add more physical activity to your daily schedule. C: Control your ABCs. (A1C, Blood Pressure, Cholesterol) K: Kick the smoking habit.