We're Back

Steven and Timothy talk about the new season of Accessible, where it’s headed, what’s going to change, and what they want to keep the same. Steven goes deep for a minute about why we took a break from the show. He shares some stories from Apple’s subscription event, including being a few feet from J.J. Abrams. And that’s just the beginning.

 
 

Episode Transcript

Steven Aquino: Hi everyone. My name is Steven Aquino and this is Season 2 Episode 1 of Accessible, and with me as always is my friend and co-host Timothy Buck. How are you Tim? 

Timothy Buck: I'm doing really well. I'm excited to be back at the show. I've missed it, honestly. It's a lot of fun to make. 

Steven Aquino: Yeah, I just checked my site. And the last time we posted a show and the last time I wrote a thing on the site was October 1st.

Timothy Buck: Wow 

Steven Aquino: Over six months. So we're gonna just take this quote-unquote show and kind of talk about you know, where we've been for the last six months and what we're doing with the show and kind of touch on what's been happening in the Apple world, in the tech world. And yeah, so.  I guess all I can say to start is 2018 was a hard year, and it got even harder towards the end of the year.

So we last recorded in October. I had to deal with some pretty serious family health issues here at home and at the beginning of the year. Well. On Christmas, I had a family emergency here at home, and we went to the hospital, and at the beginning of January that family member died, and I've been coping with that ever since and as I write this it's been about three and a half months since since everything happened and it's been hard and. 

That's why you haven't heard from me do the show and I kind of felt like in between trying to get my head on with work stuff and I thought that I should try to get back into the show. And here I am. And I kind of feel like I'm rambling here because it's kind of hard to talk about but.  

Timothy Buck: No, you're fine, man.

Steven Aquino: You know Tim like, you know, kind of help me out here. Like what do you were here? Like, what's what's on tap here? For season 2. 

Timothy Buck: Yeah, I guess first. I you already know this. I've told you this before but it is good that you took time. And I just want to say that again and also say that I'm glad that you're back. I think this show is an important show to make and there are people out there who have really found it helpful. And I think now that you are back. It's exciting to me that we can begin making it again and I think there are people out there who are excited to begin listening again, and I guess just welcome back man.

I'm glad that we were recording again and I'm excited about where this new season is going to go. We're calling the season 2. There are some things that we are thinking of changing but a lot about the show is going to stay the same. Do you want to talk about that? Little bit Steven?

Steven Aquino: So we have some ideas for what to do with this season, but the general, you know, high high scope sort of ideas going to stay the same.

We're going to record every other week. So you'll hopefully get two episodes of month and. We are still going to be focused on Apple but. Are going to try to broaden our scope more to talk about the tech industry at large and other tech companies as well.

Timothy Buck: Yeah, we kind of did that some in season 1 for some of the episodes. I remember we talked a little bit about. How Microsoft was doing some really cool stuff with their new Xbox controller and the packaging they used around that and I don't remember but they were they were a couple things like that that I thought were fun to talk about and we're accessibility specific things that are important to talk about so, I don't know Steve and I were talking before the show started and that was one of the things that we wanted to kind of... I don't know how that's going to look but we want to do that a little bit more. 

So if there are things that you all know about or you'd like us to talk about definitely reach out tweet at us. Let us know that you know something that that some other company out there other than Apple is doing that's good for accessibility. We'd love to hear about it and talk about it. 

Steven Aquino: Yeah, and you know, I've I've done a lot if you've seen. On Twitter trying to talk up other companies who are doing well like Microsoft and and of course Twitter and so yeah, if you hear if you hear anything or want us to talk about something hit us up.

So with all that sort of housekeeping out of the way.  I kind of wanted to give a quick update kind of you know, I like I said, I haven't really done a whole lot these last several months.  Apple sent me a 12 point 9 inch iPad. In December and it's sat in my living room in the shipping container for three and a half months or something because I was you know, it was hectic with all the home stuff and I finally took it out a couple weeks ago.

Kind of did some stuff with it and I'm still kind of getting my head around it, but the short of it is that it's awesome that the hardware is awesome the smartfolio is awesome. I'm enjoying that because it covers the front and the. Back as well and so as I get some more time with it, I will talk about it here on the show. The other thing I did go to Apple's March 25th event down in Cupertino, I went to their event where they had Steven Spielberg and Oprah. Talked about all the new Services. 

Timothy Buck: How close are you Ted to all the celebrities here on stage?  

Steven Aquino: Well when I was in the audience, I was not that close when we were done and I was outside just kind of hanging out talking to some people. I was like 10 feet maybe five feet from JJ Abrams. 

Timothy Buck: Nice. That's pretty cool. 

Steven Aquino: JJ Abrams was in a big herd of people and taking selfies and stuff. I did not get a chance or else I would have but I about five ten feet away from JJ Abrams.

So I did write a story for I more about my thoughts on that event and we'll put that in the notes. But boy that was a hard story to write because my head still not you know in the game. As it were and took me a long time to write that article, but hopefully people enjoyed it. I haven't heard anything about it.

So I don't know but it's out there it was published aouple weeks ago, I think. I can't remember. 

Timothy Buck: Yeah. Yeah, I think it was published the day I came over to your house for coffee. 

Steven Aquino: Okay. All right.

Timothy Buck: I remember you telling me when I was over.

Steven Aquino: So ya we'll put that in the notes. The other things kind of tangentially going on with me, as far as, you know, everything goes, kind of stuff we can talk about on the show. As you can see Tim. I'm kind of doing this on the Fly.  

Timothy Buck: Yeah, it's fine. 

Steven Aquino: Um.  I am outfitting our house with a bunch of HomeKit stuff. Well HomeKit, and then smart home stuff. So like Tim you've come over like you know that we have a nest thermostat and a Nest smoke alarm and I got some Hue stuff last week and and I actually got me a PS4 to. I figure that out. 

Timothy Buck: Oh. Woah. When did you get that?

Steven Aquino: A couple weeks ago. I got it because I thought it would take my mind off of stuff. So. 

Timothy Buck: Have you been able to play it very much?

Steven Aquino: Yeah, I've done some of it, and it's going to be interesting to talk about from an accessibility angle, which we can save for another show, but you know. Sony, for the people who know about PS4, Sony has accessibility options in the first screen like the main screen.  It's good, you know, they their stuff is good. Like there's a handful of options and they seem to be fine. But like in terms of like the actual content itself like. Third-party developers have a long way to go to support accessibility. 

Like I don't know anything about Sony's API's or anything, but let's just say like I have to sit like two feet in front of my 65-inch 4K TV to see anything. So that sucks. But hey, it's 4K and it looks awesome. Right? I don't know. But yeah, so those are kind of things that are happening with me.

I do want to talk about the smart home stuff. I want to talk about the Apple TV. I got an Apple TV in November.

And that was my first time having one so it's been interesting getting to know that.  And so there's a lot I think that we'll be able to talk about you know in between now and like June. 

Timothy Buck: Yeah. I'm just taking notes on what you said. We've got a PS4 and accessibility. Accessibility and smart home stuff. The iPad Pro kind of like a deeper dive on your sights on that. And then the Apple TV with a 4K TV, the accessibility thoughts on that as well. So that's that's quite a bit to dive deep into over to the next few episodes. 

Steven Aquino: Yeah, we've got some good stuff to talk about. And you know as I say, like, we are just trying to keep the same sort of show. We had some good feedback about the last season, you know, I had Sarah Herrlinger on at WWDC. and that was a huge hit and you know, all of our other episodes we had people on the the show if you guys want to go check it out. You can go to accessible.fm, and all of our past episodes are there. 

Timothy Buck: Yeah, I think one of the things that I really enjoyed was was having other people on so like the Sarah episode was really really good and we had Rene Ritchie on and I thought that was a really fun episode.

And so that's an one of the things that we've talked about doing a little bit more in season 2. It's not going to be every single episode. But if there are people that you'd like us to have conversations with let us know tweet at us and we'll we'll think about it and we'll let you know when we're going to have have people on. 

Steven Aquino: I should say looking at our our notes of people who we want on the show. There are several of these folks, who are at Apple now, so I don't know how well that's good going to be but you know, we will get people.

So Tim, I kind of feel like I've talked a lot. Do you want to jump in and kind of you know add anything? 

Timothy Buck: Yeah, I'm trying to think. Honestly, I think this episode is mostly going to be a catch-up for those of you who listened to season one and wanted to see more coming from us. I don't think we're going to dive too deep into any topics today, but we just wanted to get something out the door. And kind of get get back into a rhythm of recording regularly and getting things released for accessible and like we've said I think season 1 was successful, but for good reason we had to take a break and we're both excited to be back.

We want to keep this show around and we want to make it better and better and if you guys can give us feedback on how to do that. Let us know if there are people you want us to have on the show. Let us know if there are topics that we're not thinking about that you think would be really important for us to cover all of that kind of stuff would be great because we want to make a truly a truly good.

Show that you all enjoy that informs you that's fun. And I think that's possible. We just kind of got to get back in the swing of things here. And and and yeah, I guess I guess that's kind of all I'm looking at our notes and stuff. I'm excited that we we already have a list of things that we can cover, and I think those those are going to be some really interesting conversations to dive into and they're things that people are interested in and then basically by the time that those episodes are completed we're going to run into Apple season. 

We've got WWDC coming relatively soon and no idea if we'll be able to have a more interviews with Apple people, but that would be awesome if we can make that happen and even if we can't we'll we'll try to have people on from the Apple Community to talk about this. So I think honestly, I'm just excited to be back doing this and it's going to be a lot of fun to record and to produce into to share with the world. 

And and and I feel like I'm rambling now at this point, but it's just a it's a show that I believe in. I think it's important and. And I just want to see it succeed not not so that we make any money but because I think the  purpose of it is so good. And that's actually part of why I want to talk about more than just Apple and accessibility because I want to highlight the good things that are being done in accessibility across the board.

Like I'm thinking of a kind of like you've been tweeting a good bit regularly about Twitter and some of the really good stuff they've done for accessibility and Apple and how often times they get a bad rap for not innovating at all. And when you point to the accessibility stuff that they've done that literally nobody else has done that is a really really important type of innovation that we need to give them props for.

Because we want to incentivize that in these types of businesses and the more we can become a place that that shares those things, what's going really well and maybe things that aren't going so well on these these large important platforms and companies that are impacting, you know hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, that can be that can be really powerful and especially because so. 

The other people who do listen to the show are Engineers or Technical and some way working in product or at companies that build software opening their eyes to some of the things that can be done in accessibility and some of the ideas and concepts. that should be thought about when you're building products is. It is really important. 

We may never know the name of the company that somebody works for or and we may never use their product. But if, if they, if a listener out, there can be encouraged to think about accessibility as they build their SaaS app that you and I never use that is a success, you know that is that is a benefit that is a goal of this show is to get the idea of accessibility and building accessible software and Hardware out into the world. 

And for those people who are listening who have any sort of impact on that. I would just say. Please take the time to think about those sort of things as you build those products.  

Steven Aquino: Yeah, those those are all good points and to Echo what you said to him? I'm happy to be here. You know, I'm happy to be back. I wouldn't necessarily say I'm jumping in headfirst, but you know, this is good for me and a couple of things I just wanted to add. 

I'm excited about because I had to do a bit of stuff to before we started. This is the first episode of the show that I'm recording on over fiber. We got fiber at our house at the beginning of April. And I had to update macOS 10, and I had to do all sorts of other things before I started today. It was a huge pain in the butt, but the fiber either net has been super strong and hopefully my uploads and will be. You know good and Tim won't have to wait days for audio. The other thing is. I forgot what the other thing was. 

Timothy Buck: I was going to say. I think this is the first episode where your mic is. Is correctly set up. 

Steven Aquino: Oh, yes. Yes. 

Timothy Buck: So yes, it was funny. We were trying to figure out why the audio quality kept going like it just never was exactly the same like we have the exact same Mike and we had the exact same settings on everything but for some reason Steven's audio quality was just not good and I think we have that fixed now.

Steven Aquino: Yes, I think so. I hope so. 

Timothy Buck: Yeah fingers crossed. I haven't looked at the results of this recording yet. But I hope it's better. 

Steven Aquino: So Tim, I think that's good for now. I think we covered everything that we that we wanted to cover.  So with that said we will see you back in a fortnight.

You can find me online on Twitter at steven_aquino, and you can find Timothy at timothybucksf. You can find the Show at _accessblfm, and and accessible.fm is our site. 

Go listen to season 2 of our sister show, UNCO, that just started. 

Timothy Buck: Yeah, that's been a lot of fun to record. If you haven't heard season two of my other show. UNCO is I'm making series and so by the time this goes out the door.

I think the whole first series will have been released. It's called the future of Podcasts, and in the first series I talked with Stephen Hackett, Zac Khan, and Carolina Milanesi about the future of podcasts and that that has been a really fun show to produce and it's been doing really well. So if you're interested definitely go check that out at timothybuck.me/unco-interview-archive.

Steven Aquino