Access technology support - when you need it

00:07 S1

Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from November the 19th, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolley. Great to have you with us - listening maybe through Vision Australia radio associated stations of the Radio Reading Network or perhaps the Community Radio Network. There is also the podcast. To catch that, all you need to do is search for the two words Talking Tech and [?down a canal], come usually on a Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced. Another option is to ask your Siri device or smart speaker to play. Vision Australia radio talking tech podcast. Vision Australia radio talking tech podcast.

With me, Vision Australia's national access technology manager Damo McMorrow. Hey, Damo.

00:52 S2

Hi, Stephen.

00:53 S1

Damo, let's talk about something that falls right within your portfolio. And that's the AT Access Technology help desk at Vision Australia, because there's some great things that you're able to do from that desk. Tell us about it all.

01:06 S2

Yes. So the help desk really is there to provide you with phone and email support for your products. And when I say that, what I mean is that we we can't come to your house. But what we can do is if you have questions, you can call the main Vision Australia number, that's 1300 847 406. That's 1300 847 466 or 1-300 Vision. Or you can email ATC help at Vision Australia dot org. And we're able to help with a whole range of things. So if it's just advice you're looking for on, you know, phones or screen readers or magnifiers, we can certainly help with that. 

But we can also use remote support tools like Remote Incident Manager from Numa solutions. If you've got a Windows machine or a Mac, we can remote in and provide support for you that way as well and actually see what you're seeing and hear what you're hearing And address problems. That way all of the team are blind or low vision themselves and they are spread around the country. So we have Mo in Sydney, Greg in Perth, Eric in Brisbane and Brett on the Sunshine Coast. And they all use all of this sort of technology on a daily basis. So they, they bring not only a lot of technology experience to the table, but a lot of lived experience as well.

02:36 S1

So that's very interesting that they're distributed all over the country. And it really doesn't matter where you're calling from, one of those people is available to help.

02:44 S2

That's right. And we operate from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Australian Eastern Daylight Time. So and that's Monday to Friday. Obviously if you email us out of hours, we'll get back to you as soon as we're open or as soon as we can.

03:01 S1

So what sorts of things do the help desk team help people with? Like it seems pretty amazing. I know it's been possible for years, but happens a lot more now that you can remote into somebody's machine.

03:13 S2

We get all kinds of different questions. You know, it might be a problem with Jaws, or it might be an issue upgrading your Jaws or your Zoom Text. It might be a question about NVDA or Jaws... why is it not reading a particular thing? It might be just a feature that perhaps used to work and doesn't seem to be working the way that you might expect. It might be someone using something like Dolphin Supernova or Guide Connect. It can be any, any number of things. We don't tend to do things that are not at all related. So, you know, if you want to upgrade your machine from Windows 10 to Windows 11, that's not something we would necessarily do. 

So we do focus on the sort of at aspect of it, if you like, rather than, you know, fixing printers and general computer related help, removal of viruses and those kinds of things fall outside of our area of expertise. But if it's related to any AT product you're using - you know, VoiceOver Talkback on an Android phone, your Braille display, or any of your screen readers or screen magnification type products.

04:22 S1

And again, the way to get in touch with the help desk...?

04:25 S2

Is the main Vision Australia number: 1300 847 466 or ATC Help at Vision Australia dot org.

04:34 S1

1 300 847 466.

04:39 S2

That's right or ATC help at Vision Australia dot org.

04:43 S1

We've talked in the past about the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. You've got some very good news about those. Let's start by talking about what those glasses are.

04:54 S2

Just to sort of recap from previous discussions. Because they are made by Ray-Ban, they essentially look like a regular pair of sunglasses, except that they have a small camera. I think it's a 13 megapixel camera positioned in the top corner of the left hand Lens and in the opposite corner. So the top right corner of the right hand lens, there is a little LED light. And then on the right arm of the glasses is a physical button that you can press to take photographs or videos and initiate a number of other things. There is also a touch sensitive surface running along the right arm of the glasses. These are produced in partnership with Meta. 

So Meta is the company that's responsible for Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and so on. They were originally designed, I suppose, for the sighted user who might want to take photographs and post them to Instagram or post, make little videos and post them to Facebook, that kind of thing. But they've become quite popular in the blindness community because they are a mainstream consumer item. So you can purchase them from any sunglass store, and they do have the meta AI assistant built in. So you can say things like, Hey, what am I looking at? Hey, Meta, look and read me any signs. Those kinds of things. So you can sort of get hands-free information about the visual world around you.

06:24 S1

And there's been a great development with them in very recent times.

06:28 S2

Yes. That's right. The Be My Eyes service, which is a visual interpretation service that is staffed entirely by volunteers. So they have, I believe, 8.1 million volunteers globally registered with the system. And the idea is that you can make a call and you put through to one of those volunteers and they can provide you visual assistance. So up to now that's been done using the back camera on your phone, either Android or your iPhone. So you could ask for assistance reading print. You could ask for some visual information about the world around you. You could ask, you know, what's on the screen of my computer, that kind of thing. 

But they have partnered with Meta as well, so that you can now get hands free visual interpretation assistance through the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The idea is you can say, hey Meta, Be My Eyes - and it will initiate a call to one of the Be My Eyes volunteers, and you could then get help to navigate through the airport or... you know, have a look if your dog or your cat has taken off out the back, you know, is it visible somewhere, whatever it might be? 

The other thing that they've done, which is quite nice, is that you can double tap the button on the top of the right arm of the glasses and switch between your phone's camera and the camera in the glasses. So you might, for example, use the glasses to help you get somewhere or find a doorway. But you then might want to switch to your phone camera and have the volunteer read the menu to you as an example. For those that already have the glasses, all you need to do is make sure that you have the latest update. And then under the settings under accessibility, there's a Be My Eyes button which allows you to link your Be My Eyes account to the glasses.

08:26 S1

Where do you get these glasses and how much are they?

08:29 S2

They vary in price depending on what lenses you have. There's three different kind of models. The difference is just in the shape of them. So there's the Wayfarer, which is sort of a trapezoid shaped lens. There's the Headliner which is sort of the traditional kind of rounded glasses. And then there's the Skyla, which I haven't seen. I think they're perhaps more an oval one, but you can also get things like ones with transition lenses or polarised lenses, that kind of thing. The most basic one starts at about $460, and you can get them from any of your sort of major sunglasses type chains. I think I got mine from a local Sunglass Hut store. I think OPSM have them. Any of your sort of standard eyewear type stores would carry them.

09:15 S1

The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. 

We have talked in the past about the Blind Shell classic phone. There's a new model on the horizon, shall we say.

09:29 S2

There is indeed. Yes, the Blind Shell Classic 3 is what they're calling this one. The Blind Shell is what they used to call a candy bar style of phone. Anyone that remembers the old Nokia type phones from the 90s, you know, with a tactile keypad, a screen above that. And they were sort of roughly the the shape of a chocolate bar, which is why they used to call them a candy bar phone. That's sort of what the Blind Shell looks and feels like. And it provides a whole array of features, all of which, you know, the output is is spoken. The Classic 2 did all of the usual sort of smart phone type things, and it had an array of curated apps that you could install, things like WhatsApp. It was compatible with the Arc Arcs vision headset, a whole range of other apps and things that you could install. 

Now, with the classic three, they look and feel the same. I don't think there's any change to the physical design, but they have added some new features, so they've added a voice assistant, which is sort of like your Siri or your Google type assistant, where you can ask it questions and get multiple pieces of information rather than just, you know, voice commands to call Fred or that type of thing. It goes much beyond that. There is also the ability to install a wider range of apps. I don't exactly know how this works, but you can install other apps that are available on the Google Play Store. Not all of them, but a subset, and not all of them will work. So it will be some sort of experimentation with this. 

You know, if you want to go and download the Sportsbet app or the Tab app or something like that. It may work, but it may not. So the support, you know, for that is fairly limited. If you're using an app that isn't sort of native to the phone, if you like.

11:31 S1

There's also going to be the capability for someone to connect into your phone remotely and do updates and things.

11:39 S2

That's right. Yes.

11:41 S1

So so there might be the tech guru in the family who is very good with this stuff and can help out mum or dad or grandma, grandad, whoever with the updating to the phone. And that takes a lot of the tech challenge requirement away from the owner of the phone, doesn't it?

11:57 S2

It definitely does because a lot of people, you know, they don't necessarily want to know what's going on under the hood. They just want the thing to work. And so yes, that's a really good feature. I think they're calling it Tandem. Those that are familiar with sort of the Jaws Tandem concept would be familiar with that. So yes, someone can log in remotely and install an update for you or help you figure out how an app works or what's on the screen.

12:24 S1

Now, I believe these phones are going to cost pretty much the same as existing ones, in the order of $1,000, something like that. When are they coming to Australia?

12:33 S2

There's a couple of things that still need to happen. One is that we obviously need to get things like all of the electrical compliance sorted before we can bring them in, but also we want to make sure that they're actually approved for use by all of the carriers. The Australian Communications and Media Authority, ACMA, recently gave a directive to the telcos to say that if it's not a phone that you recognise, if it's not what they call white listed, then you know you should potentially block it from the network. And I think that's to avoid, you know, people... bringing in, you know, phones that might cause radio interference or cause other problems or might not meet the Australian standards. 

So one of the things that we would need to do before it's available is to make sure that it's whitelisted with all of the all of the carriers. Those processes are already underway, so I would think they should be available here in Australia in the new year.

13:30 S1

The Blonde Show classic three. The phone with the physical buttons on it. Watch out for that. We'll have news of it as it does arrive on our shores. Now, before we go, a reminder you can find details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program from VA radio.org/talking tech. VA radio.org/talking tech and to right to the program.

13:54 S2

You can email me, Damo, Damo dot McMorrow - m c m o r r o w - at Vision Australia dot org.

14:05 S1

damo.mcmorrow@visionaustralia.org - This has been Talking Tech, with me has been Vision Australia's national Access Technology manager Damien McMorrow. I'm Stephen Jolley. Take care. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.