AT-Newswire

Here, Aaron Di Blasi contrasts the promise of vast digitized archives, university repositories, public records, historic newspapers, special collections, with the reality that blind and print-disabled users are often locked out because the content lives in inaccessible PDFs and page images. He explains why legacy archives are uniquely hard to make accessible at scale: the sheer volume can reach tens or hundreds of millions of pages, usage follows a “long tail” where you can’t predict what will matter next, legal expectations are rising, and one-time remediation projects are expensive, incomplete, and quickly outdated, leaving “islands” of accessibility in a sea of inaccessible content.

Here, Aaron Di Blasi argues that most organizations handle document accessibility through reactive “fire drills”, a student, employee, or customer can’t read a PDF, the request gets routed to a specialist or vendor, and an accessible version eventually appears, only for the cycle to repeat. He explains why this breaks at scale: organizations underestimate document volume, face huge variation in formats and complexity (born-digital vs. scans, tables, forms, math, charts), rely on exception-driven workflows, and confront the high cost of manual remediation, leaving people with disabilities waiting, excluded, or forced to depend on others for access.

Here, Aaron Di Blasi describes a familiar failure mode in enterprise remote support: organizations deploy “best-in-class” remote tools that work fine for most staff, but quietly shut out blind and low-vision technicians and users because the experience assumes a sighted operator and a primarily visual interface. He explains how this accessibility gap shows up in day-to-day support, workarounds like putting a phone on speaker so a technician can hear a user’s screen reader, longer “tell me what you see” calls, and capable blind IT professionals being excluded from frontline rotations, ultimately driving slower resolution times, inconsistent support quality, and a widening mismatch between stated accessibility commitments and actual workflows.

Dearest Top Tech Tidbits Readers, Supporters, Sponsors and Advertisers. I am writing today to inform you that both the Top Tech Tidbits website and newsletter will be offline from December 1, 2025 to January 1, 2026.

Here, Aaron Di Blasi spotlights BrailleTeach—a multilingual, audio-guided handheld trainer built around six oversized toggles laid out like a Braille cell—as a practical answer to stalled early Braille literacy where teachers and budgets are scarce. Rooted in a 2016 encounter with a newly blind adult and focused on “dignity through literacy,” the device pairs touch with voice prompts across eight modes for letters, numbers, and symbols, adds one-minute challenges for speed, and aims to take learners through the basics in roughly three months. It’s lightweight (~250 g) with speaker and headphone jack, recharges via micro-USB, ships today in US/UK English, German, Spanish, Azerbaijani, and Russian (Arabic and Turkish in development), and is meant to complement—not replace—teachers. The need is urgent, framed by large, under-served populations and constrained classroom realities.

Here, Vicki Walton turns a family gathering into a multigenerational reflection on how technology both empowers and excludes. A web accessibility specialist and IT QA tester, Walton evaluates digital tools with assistive tech like screen readers and voice navigation yet admits even “computer people” can feel overwhelmed by the pace of change. This personal vantage point frames perspectives from their pre-internet mother, Gen Z daughter, and boomer-age sister and wife, contrasting technology’s efficiency with the frictions and anxieties it creates in everyday life.

Here Aaron Di Blasi introduces ConnectAlt as the BLV community’s one-stop, accessible hub for discovering events, programs, and resources, framing it as the practical answer to the weekly “Where do I find what’s next?” question. He explains how ConnectAlt centralizes fragmented information into a searchable calendar with filters by keyword, date, organization, and location (including virtual), and why that matters now. The article spotlights the team, creator/co-founder Lucie Courtois (who is blind), with co-founders Carol Trapani and Ella Deshautreaux, clarifying how lived experience, community leadership, and day-to-day operational rigor combine to make a national aggregation effort credible. He discloses that ConnectAlt has joined Top Tech Tidbits as a Sponsor while affirming Tidbits’ not-for-profit, editorial independence and noting ConnectAlt’s sustainability exploration (sponsorships, org-side analytics/featured placements, grants, and potential API access) with core access remaining free.

Here, Aaron Di Blasi announces the launch of the PWD Media Distribution Cooperative—an invitation-only, low-cost syndication network created to amplify disability-focused content by pooling the LinkedIn and Facebook Page audiences of trusted partners. Sparked by an introduction to Dr. Kirk Adams and a guest spot on the Heart of Influence show, Di Blasi and Adams aligned their networks (with partners like Donna J. Jodhan) and now use Hootsuite to schedule posts across the combined channels. Together, the co-op can reach more than 150,000 disability-specific readers across roughly 27 channels, positioning it as one of the largest and most targeted distribution networks serving the disability community.

Here, Aaron Di Blasi introduces Refocus: The Essential Guide to Living a Happy and Successful Life with Vision Loss as the plain-English, whole-life handbook our ecosystem has been missing, written by people who’ve walked the road and know where the potholes are. Co-authors Victoria Nolan (four-time Paralympian, educator, AMI TV co-host, and CNIB leader) and Shawn Maloney (legally blind researcher-educator with eye-health and tech credentials) built a staged framework, the Seven A’s of Vision Loss: Acceptance, Attitude, Adaptation, Awareness, Advocacy, Accessibility, and Achievement, and a two-track method (mindset + mechanics) that turns uncertainty into action. The piece explains why this lived-authority + how-to blend matters now, and argues that the framework travels beyond blindness to other disability journeys because the underlying moves are universal.

Here, Aaron Di Blasi, PR Director for AT-Newswire and Publisher of Top Tech Tidbits, introduces BrailleGPT. A groundbreaking, portable, AI-native speech-to-Braille device designed specifically for DeafBlind users. Developed by 20-year-old innovator Dunya Hassan, BrailleGPT captures live speech, processes it with on-device AI for context and clarity, and instantly renders it as tactile Braille on a refreshable display. Aaron outlines the access gap this device seeks to close, noting that mainstream AI assumes sight or hearing and leaves the DeafBlind community reliant on costly, tethered equipment or human intermediaries. Hassan’s vision is to combine portability, privacy, and contextual intelligence into one affordable unit, empowering users to access spoken information anywhere, on their own terms.