Post By Jeff Thompson
From rooms filled with topics from History, Voice Over Artists, Film Makers, Guide Dog Users, Music Makers, Poets, Yoga and much much more, there is a Club House for everyone!
Sign up with a phone number and get an invite and share your invites with others.
Over a week ago the accessibility features in the Club House app made a huge step forward. Let’s say, the Club House is definitely usable.
If you have Screen Recognition set up in your rotor, then you are more able to access a few interactive moving parts.
If not, there are some other methods to the madness but believe me, you’ll catch on in no time.
Once you open up the app, sign up with a phone number and you can also connect up your Twitter account. If you receive an invite to clubhouse you are all set and you can begin.
The first page will list some scheduled rooms and then rooms that are open right now.
By tapping on a room you are placed inside and listening begins.
You can ask to speak by raising your hand, a button in the bottom right corner area. Be sure that you are using an earphone as voice over can interrupt while your mic is on.
Once you raise your hand an administrator may allow you to speak and you can accept the invite to speak by tapping on your icon/name and accept in the drop down menu.
Once you have speaking privilege, the mute button appears in the bottom right select this and you are muted, unselected and your microphone is live again.
In the bottom left you will find a button labeled, “Leave quietly.” This allows you to leave the room without any interruption.
But while you are in a room, you can tap on the attendees icon/name and learn more about them in their bio and decide to follow them or not.
From the first page, at the bottom, you will find a “Start a Room” button. You can start an open, social or closed room.
An open room is open to everyone and anyone can enter and listen in or be put on the stage, meaning they got speaking privileges from the administrator. Since you started the room, you are automatically administrator and if you invite friends from the button down below on the right, they will join with Mike already on. The problem with tapping on “Invite Friend to the Room” button is that there is no button to dismiss this pop-up panel. What I do is turn off voice over and touch near the top of the screen and turn voice over back on.
At this point you can make other people administrators as well. You can also put someone back in the audience and they will have to raise their hand to get speaking privileges once again.
To do this you can tap on the icon/name of the person and in the menu you will find the options available.
This is important as an Admin as to control the room and how many speakers have speaking privileges.
Another button down on the bottom right, you’ll find view raised hands. By tapping on this button you can swipe down and except them or not. They will be in the order that they raise their hand. Thus, you can call up on speaker time put them back in the audience and pull up the next one. As a moderator, this is all at your discretion.
By turning on screen recognition, you may be able to read some of the pop-ups that come onto the screen from the top. Such as, when you request to speak. The admin will except you and a message or pier near the top. This is typically in a green color banner. If you have some side and can turn on screen recognition, you can touch this area and get more information. However, you can also go to your icon/name tap on that and get excepted there.
When setting up a room be sure to name the room as visitors on the app will be able to understand what is being chatted about in your room.
We have been sending the developers information about the accessibility issues and hope to get a quick response and hopefully the next update we will see some more improvements.
Another room choice that you can start is a “Social Room”. This will start a room with only people you follow.
And the third type of room you can initiate is a “Closed Room”. You choose the people invited to the room.
You can open up your contacts to the app and if you have their phone number in your contacts they will be brought up in a list of friends where you can “Ping” them into the room. This is like saying to them to come drop in I think you would like this room.
Navigate around the app and check out the categories of topics and interests. This way you will be notified when particular rooms open up with a like interests or if someone you follow joins a room. If you allow notifications, you will be sent alerts and don’t be surprised if the notifications start increasing because over the last 3 weeks, I have seen an enormous growth in the participation of the Blind Community. Be sure to check out the settings as you will be able to add your interests which will populate more rooms you just may want to drop in on and chat.
Be sure to follow me on Club House, I am Jeff Thompson, and I will see you in a Club House room soon!
Contact Your State Services
If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361.
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