Coming up on Mosen at Large 209, big changes to Aira’s offerings, Mastodon thrives while Twitter becomes less accessible, and a reminder to cast your vote for your top 10 favourite holiday songs

Kia ora Mosen at Largers. Here’s what’s coming up in our next two-hour show that’s got the blind community talking.

For many of us, Aira has become a handy tool. It’s professionally-trained agents provide sighted assistance for a wide range of tasks, ranging from navigating you through unfamiliar places to conquering in inaccessible applications. Aira hopes that more businesses will pay for the service for blind people to use in a variety of contexts. Still, many of us pay for monthly minute plans, while others have been able to make do with their free offerings. Beginning this Monday, those free offerings are going to become less generous. Those on legacy plans that were on the market before the last major changes in 2018, and which are considerably more generous than current offerings, will need to pick a new plan. And there’ll be more expensive plans on the market in January. You can avoid the price increase by locking in one of today’s plans now.

There’s a lot to take in, and understandably, many in the blind community are expressing concern. To get some answers, I’m joined by Aira’s CEO Troy Otillio, and their Director of Customer Communications, Jenine Stanley. If you have views to share on all the changes at Aira, you are of course welcome to send them in.

It’s been another week of upheaval in social media as a new network that wants to be a Twitter alternative explicitly chooses to ignore accessibility, and the Twitter sign-up process becomes inaccessible. Meanwhile, Mastodon thrives.

And time is running out for you to tell Mushroom FM your top 10 holiday songs. We’d love to get your vote so we can get a good representative sample. Plus, I can’t help myself, I’ll do a bit of lobbying for a Christmas song I would love to see get to number one this year. My choice may surprise you.

There’s plenty more on the show as well. If you want to raise something new, you’re very welcome. Please don’t be shy, I’d love to hear from you. What makes Mosen At Large special is the global community we’ve built and all the perspectives we share with each other.

To contribute, send an email with an audio attachment or just written down to Jonathan at MushroomFM.com, or call the listener line, +18646066736, that’s 1-864-60Mosen.

Catch Mosen At Large anywhere you get podcasts. Expect the next episode to drop on Sunday morning New Zealand time.

You can subscribe to Mosen at large anywhere you get your podcasts.

Thank you so much for listening and contributing to the show and see you soon for Mosen At Large.