My Adventures with the A Lady

Hello everybody. I'm here this evening to talk about my birthday. Specifically, one of my birthday presents. Last weekend when I was at my parents' place celebrating, one of my siblings handed me a big rectangular box that was wrapped up. I opened it and took out a cylinder thing about the size of a can of pringles. I really wasn't expecting much in the way of B-day presents, since I already have kind of a lot of stuff. But I must admit this cylinder thing sparked my curiosity right away. It turned out to be an Amazon Echo. Some other family members have these devices and now I can proudly claim ownership of one as well. One of my tutors and I set up the device earlier this week. I had already downloaded the companion iOS app, and I have to say that in terms of accessibility, this app needs a bit of work but it is usable. Fortunately I shut off VoiceOver and this sighted tutor took over. We got my Echo up and running with little if any difficulty. I have played around with it a good deal throughout the week, and am very impressed thus far. I was honestly a bit surprised that I could actually enable a skill from my iPhone with no trouble. Regarding the device itself and Amazon's accessibility pages, I'm very happy though. Somebody was kind enough to label the device's 4 buttons in Braille. Not sure whether it came like that, or the Braille labels were affixed to the device when it arrived at my parents' place. But in any case, I greatly appreciate the gesture. I'm sure I'll continue to have fun with all my toys, and perhaps even learn a little something more in the process. Regarding the iOS app, I plan on contacting Amazon and giving them a piece of my mind as I've no doubt others have been doing. Just a little friendly reminder though to those who may be a bit heavy-handed in their advocacy approach to Amazon and/or any of these other companies: remember that they are human beings like us and have feelings too. They may not know as much about accessibility as some of us do, and in some cases they might not know a thing about it. But having said that, I for one commend Amazon on their great accessibility efforts thus far, and there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that they will continue the trend of good access.