AT-Newswire

Here, Aaron Di Blasi, Publisher of Access Information News and PR Director of AT-Newswire, introduces his 43,000+ weekly readers to Cam Wells, a Windsor, Ontario-based journalist, disability advocate, and stroke survivor who has hosted and produced Handi-Link on CJAM 99.1 FM for 18 years, making it Canada’s longest-running disability radio program. The article traces how Di Blasi and Wells connected in April 2026 after Wells reached out in response to an Access Information News newsletter, and profiles the full scope of Wells’s work: a nationally syndicated weekly radio show that has featured guests from Bill Nye to former Ontario Lieutenant Governor David Onley, co-authorship of the NCRA’s national disAbilities Handbook on radio accessibility, an 18-chapter Accessible Diversity curriculum, and ongoing roles at the Italian Canadian HandiCapable Association and as a regular research consultant with the National Organization for Rare Disorders.

Here, Aaron Di Blasi, Director for the AT-Newsire PR service and Publisher of the Top Tech Tidbits weekly newsletter, explains why SensePilot immediately stood out to him as more than just another assistive technology product. After connecting with Mike Hazlewood and learning more about the platform, Aaron argues that the real story is not simply that SensePilot enables hands-free Windows control through head movement, facial gestures, and speech, but that it does so using a standard webcam and an access model that lowers cost, setup complexity, and hardware dependency. From Aaron’s perspective as both a publisher and an engineer, that combination makes SensePilot especially relevant to the AT community because it points toward a more scalable, practical future for access.

Here, Aaron Di Blasi, Director for the AT-Newswire PR Service, explains that the 2024 ADA Title II web accessibility rule for state and local government websites and mobile apps remains fully in force, even as anxiety grows around a possible unpublished change now under review inside DOJ and OIRA. The article’s core message is that nothing has been rolled back yet: WCAG 2.1 Level AA remains the operative standard, and the existing compliance deadlines still stand. What has changed is the process. DOJ appears to have shifted from a more ordinary rulemaking path to the faster, less transparent interim-final-rule route, and that has disability advocates, public entities, and vendors all watching closely.

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.