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There is really no need for anyone to physically go to the bank these days. Mobile banking is here to stay and offers the same features compared to any brick and mortar location... including 2 days advance deposit on scheduled direct deposits, check deposit using your phone camera app and much more and all protected under FDIC rules. Most of these banks don't have fees. The app sometime needs some work on the accessibility side... but a simple inversion of your screen can make the app totally useable for people with low vision. For example Ally, Capital One are among the most accessible if you invert your screen when using their apps. On the other side SoFi needs some serious work. Another advantage of these banks is that they offer terrific saving rates compared to traditional banks. let's look at those rates as of today august 3rd 2022. Ally - 1.4 percent APY Discover - 1.5 percent Betterment - 1.6 percent Capital One - 1.4 percent. Tmobile money - 4 percent on first 3000 dollars then 1.5 percent for anything above. I rarely use cash but those banks allow for withdrawal on any ATMs (check with age bank first). Even if the ATM you are using isn't on the bank's own network, your ATM fee will be reimbursed to you automatically. Some ATMs even allow for cash deposit ! Check out with the bank or wander around their apps. Ally for example has a map giving you the closest ATM around based on your current location... including information if the ATM allows for cash or check deposit. Don't waste your money on fees and don't waste your time with Bank of America or Chase offering saving rates of 0.02 percent... For some of us, even an additional 10 or 20 bucks a months can save us some sleep at night. . Plus... no need to walk or use public transportations to get to the bank. Are you using one of these online banks with terrific saving rates ? comment below and share with us.

There are 23 volumes of the Joe Pickett short novel series. I started with volume 23 not really knowing what I was doing. A few things in that latest volume made me want to read the volume 22. That's all it took to get hooked. Easy listening, Great narrator. And relatively short in length at eight to eleven hours long each. So I did what I should have done from the beginning... and started with volume 1. It was a bit slow but it received some awards. Volume 2 got better. Then 'Winterkill', volume 3 of the series got pretty damn close to enter my top 5 favorite Audiobooks of all time list. Now I am on volume 4 'Trophy Kill' this week Audiobook of the Week. A little slower than the previous volume, definitely more gruesome and interestingly enough a bit less predicable than the previous three volumes. For better or for worse I think. There is a quality in Joe Pickett book series that makes listening or reading each volume a guilty pleasure. It isn't high literature and your eyes will roll more than once. It's safe and traditional story telling. if you focus enough, you will probably guess what happens next but what makes the series so great is that each book was not only published once a year but it also follows the Pickett family as it grows older. 4 and 6 year old kids in volume 1 from the Pickett family get a year older in each following volume for example, while the struggle of Joe and his wife MaryBeth to keep it all together becomes more and more difficult. The main character backstory is extremely simple and one dimensional if you look at each volume... but at the volumes pile on, each character slowly becomes more complex. I will not spoil this volume ... especially since the storyline is already fairly predicable at time but lets just say that Joe Pickett meets the X-Files makes for a great listening experience. As I suggested earlier, you should start the series at volume 1 to see each character grow and becomes more complex. but in truth, each volume is really self sufficient meaning you won't need the previous volume to get 99 percent of what each volume has to offer. You will miss on the 1 percent that makes this book series an addictive pleasure to read or listen. Give it a try. You will love it. The real question is price however. If you have to pay for each volume of the series, the whole series will cost you a small fortune and I mentioned earlier it takes a few volumes to realize how great an investment the whole series could be. To be very honest, if I had to pay 20 bucks for the first volume , I am not sure I would have kept going with volume 2. Luckily I didn't have to pay. If you can have access to them for free this is a no brainer. Jump on the book series and start with volume 1. Book details: 'Trophy Kill' Volume 4 of the Joe Pickett novel series Author: C J Box Narrator: David Hartley-Martgolin Length: 10 hours 38 minutes Mystery - Suspens. Contains strong language, gruesome description of death and some violence. Probably not for young listeners. (This version is a commercial audiobook production)

Depending of a few well defined diseases and sometime your genetic makeup, you may be lucky enough to have a therapy working to restore your eyesight. For others, it's not necessarily a possibility. The strategy your doctor will offer may be about preserving what you have left and/or slowing down the progression of your disease. The web is full of miracle products and success stories. Most of them are bogus of course... (a trip to a foreign country to try something unavailable in your own country anyone ?). Some claims are a bit more substantial and based on sciences and published papers. Most of them talk about dietary supplements such as a particular vitamin or other supplements like Omega 3. After multiple doctor visits, I have developed quite the pill regimen. Granted, some of my supplements requires multiple pills to reach the level required by the doctor, I am currently at eight daily pills. Do they work ? Do they play placebo ? The truth is that I have better eyes days than others and it seems that bad days are coming when I forgot my pills. And then there is the odd side effects on medications or lifestyle choices. For example, my eyesight seems to improve dramatically after a heavy handed workout. I also appears to be much more light sensitive when I am under ibuprofen. I am a scientist in my core and I am very aware of bias but when I hear others sharing the same experience using the same supplements, medications or other things as me, I always take a step back. What surprises and often angers me is how these shared experiences moments occur. Pure luck. Medical papers and scientific papers in general are usually published because the research associated to them are expansion on other previous papers. It is cheaper to do research this way. Building on someone else's proven research makes the next one more likely to be positive. What about mixing things up ? What about research about what people actually experience ? I am not going to pretend that I am going to change the world but I am willing to try. Let's share our personal experience and give us a chance to meet others who share the exact same experience. Maybe there is something behind it science has not had a chance to consider. In order to work on this idea, I am going to star a new topic of discussion on our forum page, under Resources submenu and share my experience. I would like to encourage you to share your own. Maybe down the line, we will be able to find a trend or common story. Lets call it experience rooted crowd based research. Let me know what you think in the comment section below.

In this new episode of our brand new season of Blind Sanity podcast out this week : - New season with new episode format. We are keeping each episode to 25 minutes with 3 segments: News, Topic of the Week and your Mail and Comments. - On the News section, learn about accessibility planninf for the 2024 Paris Olympics Games. - This week's deep dive is about Voice Assistance technology. The first part of a month long series about Amazon, Apple and Googlw's audio assistive tech. What it is. what it can do for you. which system is the best for the low vision and blind community? - We finish things up with comments on my opinion piece about White canes. Click here to listen to the episode or subscribe on your favorite podcast app and listen to more than 100 episodes available to date. Source: https://www.blindsanity.com/podcast-1/episode/21c8143e/s2e01-new-season-new-format

Is your cane entirely white ? Mine isn't and apparently it's by purpose. A totally white cane means you are totally blind. Or you low vision is unusable. A white cane with a red section (mostly the section before the tip) means you have low vision but what is left is actually useable. For example, if you can see the crossing lines on the road. A white cane with red stripes is for blind and deaf individuals. You should have the cane that best describe your vision condition. It is a visual key to signal your disability to people around you. But seriously... How many people know about these cane variations. I know someone who actually thought the red stripes cane was for Christmas. Not kidding ! There is definitely some education needed here.

One thing I left out of my Twitter accessibility review was Magic Tap, Magic Tap is a feature that is activated on IOS devices when VoiceOver is ON. Double tap with two fingers and magic should happen. And it actually does... when the app developer includes it on his app. Magic Tap is present almost everywhere on Apple stock app but it is rarely implemented in third party apps. Mostly because of Apple not being very clear about how to implement it. Then of course it really is up to the third party dev to decide to include accessibility features to apps... and it isn't usually a top priority. Twitter however includes the feature. It is found under the accessibility menu of the app (Twitter Settings > Accessubility...>Accessibility if you wonder where to go) . Magic Tap can do nothing if you select None. It can automatically start a tweet if you select that choice. Try Magic Tap on twitter and share with us if you find another third party app supporting the Tap. Remember though... Magic Tap works only with VoiceOver.

The symbol of perseverance and independence to people with vision impairment. It is the most useful tool and the simplest to use. It literally opens the way in front of you in a crowded place. Dogs want to play with it when they see it on the road. Kids think it is the coolest thing on Earth. It is the White Cane... ...and I hate it so thoroughly. As someone who slowly loses his sight, the cane is the most obvious sign of a disability. A huge ugly white flag telling everyone about something I have to deal with on a personal level. . I hate my white cane. Does it feel better to say it out loud ? I don't know. What is your perspective ? Comment below

Let's look at accessibility settings for Twitter. The accessibility menu has often moved around over Twitter version releases. Accessibility is now found under Twitter Settings > Accessibility, display and language. A strange one size fits all option... For visually impaired users, the offer is very limited. Twitter offers to increase color contrast. If you already use that option on your device, I am not sure this makes any difference. I sure don't see any. Twitter also offers a few options regarding text to speech, which may or may not work depending on the speech software you are using. More on that below... You can have web articles opened within Twitter in Reader Mode. For those who don't know what Reader Mode is, it is a tweak in the web browser interface which locates text in a web page and displays it in large font on a dark background if you are in dark mode. Images, advertisement (in some cases), etc. are ignored. If you don't use that mode on regular basis for your web browsing, you may want to look into it. You can also increase font size within the interface. Again, if you have already activated this option within your device accessibility menu, this won't make much difference. There is a lot more Twitter could do for us however. Dark mode is nice and smooth on our eyes... but Direct Messaging is awful to use. Text boxes are too bright and the contrast with the text inside these dialog boxes makes things unreadable. This really should be fixed. Twitter Spaces needs work too. Announcement and Spaces invitations are displayed in large white cards within feeds. This is running against the idea behind dark mode. I can't read a thing! A shame because Spaces is actually a great alternative to Discord. Finally, text to speech is funky. Apple VoiceOver will not always read tweets you want to check out, describing instead the various Twitter menus accessible on the on the screen. What do you think about Twitter's accessibility options ? Do you have any suggestions ? Share with us in the comments section below.

In this week's episode: - We discuss the difference between stand alone and integrated screens. - We talk about the easiest way to improve contrast settings of your mobile device and computer. We preview our new website and describe each pages. We look at Sign Up / Log In process and membership benefits.. Check out the episode here or head out to our podcast page. Don't forget to subscribe and give us plenty of stars on your favorite podcast app. Source: https://www.blindsanity.com/podcast-1/episode/3bd676b8/s1e97-picture-quality-settings-website-preview

Contrast setting is maybe the most important setting you want to spend time on to improve reading on your screens. First, let's talk about contrast setting on TV and stand alone computer screens. We are talking about the contrast option usually buried in the settings options of these type of screens. If you struggle trying to find that option or if you didn't know it existed, you are not missing much. Even with a good eyesight it's almost impossible to make a difference between a low or high contrast on these screens. You will always have better results using the contrast option from the computer attached to these screens. For example, Mac computers can increase contrast to such an extent that each word starts to bleed light at its highest contrast setting. When you deal with a device with its own screen, chances are the software running your device is optimized for your screen. Head directly to contrast settings and play around to see what works best for you. This works for phones and laptops. Once you are done with contrast settings, there are other options that are not directly related to contrast but work the same way. For example, eliminating transparency usually increases contrast dramatically. Try this on Apple TV for example, it's the most dramatic way to improve screen readability. Increase font size or use bold font works as well. Android devices allow you to change font type across the device, some fonts are easier to read than others. Experiment with a few to see what works for you. Some devices offer you an option for people with light sensitivity, Apple TV for example. Selecting that option darkens the screen. It doesn't work well for my condition but you should try on your own to see if it works well for you. There is no single magic setting that will work for everyone, unfortunately; you are likely to spend some time fine tuning these settings. Remember that if you are sharing a screen with someone with different eye conditions those settings may not work for them. If your system allows you to save your settings, take advantage of it. At the very least take note of the changes you made. That way, you won't have to spend too much time resetting your screen after your friend or family member changes them to their preferences.

Our new website needs bloggers in the following areas: Lifestyle: Cooking, Fashion, Gardening, Sport, Meditation, lifehaxks Technologies: Electronics, Connected Devices, Accessibility, Assistive Technology for the Blind Legal: ADA regulations, social security and disability programs, Anti-discrimination laws and regulations. You do not need to be an expert in any of these fields. All you need is honesty, personal interest and passion to help others to the best of your capabilities. When selected, you will need to issue a minimum of two blog articles a week. Unless there is a request for a special topic, you are free to blog about anything you like within your assigned field. Note that these positions are voluntary based. There is no funding at that stage. You will be in for an adventure trying to develop the website.

A quick look at unemployment numbers for vision impaired Americans - 45 percent of Americans with vision impairment are working. - 10 percent of Americans workforce with vision impairment are unemployed. - 55 percent of Americans with vision impairment are not part of the labor force. Numbers are from 2017 (source American Community Survey (ACS)). Current labor shortage has improved employment odds. Of course, this says nothing about wages. Also, remember that to be considered part of the workforce, you need to have a job or be actively looking for one. Being underage or retired count as out of the workforce. Unemployment numbers are surprisingly low considering how limiting vision impairment can be. I suspect Assistive Technologies are playing a critical role here.