Bone Conduction Headphones, BrailleDoodle, Smart Glasses and more

00:21S1

Hello everyone! Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from April the 9th, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolley. Great to have you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio, Associated Stations of Australia or 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 downer can all 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 Virgin Australia Radio talking tech podcast Vision Australia Radio Talking Tech podcast. With me, someone who can explain all this tech stuff really well. Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology, David Woodbridge. David, let's start with our product Minute. And it's a headset, very popular headset from the vision store of Vision Australia.

01:15S2

Correct. So this is called the Shocks. And remember this was renamed a couple of years ago from Aftershocks. This is the Shocks Open Move Bone Conduction Headset. So it's one of those ones where these little pads sit in front of your ears, on your cheekbones, and the sound gets transmitted through the bones into your inner ear. That's why they're called bone conduction headphones. And besides the fact that I love bone conduction headphones because they'll leave your ears open to your surrounding environment, particularly when you're walking around and crossing roads and listen to the traffic. The other thing I like about them, which is only occurred to me probably this year, is number one, I love devices that use standard usb-C cables because some of the shocks that have come out a bit more recently, uh, like the open. Com, they use usb-C, I believe, but it's a dedicated little cable that plugs sort of into the back of the surrounding part of the headset, just below where you've got your volume up and volume down, which sort of irritates me. The nice thing about the open move is that it's a standard usb-C port, which means all my plethora of cables that I've got can plug in to my open move headset. It's a couple of years old, but it's still working exactly the way it used to. It goes with my all over the headset now it goes with my multiple other usb-C devices, so I just love it. Number one, because it's bone conduction and number two because it uses a standard usb-C port.

02:48S1

We have some news from Blasi Technologies about their BT speak products. The BT speak is the nice little braille oriented device that you can explain more clearly and tell us about the change.

03:01S2

For people that are sort of in my type of age range, you might remember a very light in the 1980s and early 90s, there was a thing called the Braille and speak, which was a six dot braille input cable with a spacebar. Well, now this, of course, is being redone now as a modern device running a Raspberry Pi computer Linux. And what they did was they brought out, I think it was about 100 units in March, and they were offering two levels. There was the basic version and then the Pro version. So the basic version had a little tablet mode with basically editing and a few other apps in it, and the Pro version was actually that particular function, the basic function. And then you could switch over to the Pro version, which was literally running a full Linux desktop called mate, and then of course, the screen reader to allow you to use that desktop, which was called orca, orca. And what they discovered after about four weeks on the market that nobody was really buying the basic version. 

Everybody wanted the version that allowed you to switch between the basic mode or the note taker mode, as I call it, and the desktop mode. So they decided that rather than wasting all the manufacturing money, if you like, on producing two versions, they would just offer the one version, which is the Pro. So that means if you're in a bit of a hurry, you can just use the straight note taking function to take notes, and then you can switch over to the full desktop version, and you can run basically anything you like on there. Um, particularly web based applications. You've got Thunderbird for email, you've got Chrome web browsing, for web browsing, lots and lots of other things. So I think it's great that they've early on made this decision that they're going to produce the BT spec Pro. And they did say, of course, that people that have bought the basic version that will still be supported, but literally to buy one now it'll be the BT Speak Pro, not the BT Speak Basic.

05:00S1

So what's really the market would you say for the BT speak products? Braille people might think yes I should get that. Are they the people you'd be suggesting it to or who would they be?

05:11S2

People that want very fast, efficient access to notes because you can switch lightning quick between the different. Open documents on, in this case, the beat speak. It really makes it much more efficient. And then when you have to then log on to, you know, a major website to access it, you can do that with the desktop version. I would say it's any competent user of braille, um, that wants speech output. By the way, you can link up a display to this if you really wanted to. Plus you can also add in a monitor, a mouse, and a keyboard mouse if you really wanted to as well, uh, via a little USB hub thing that you could connect to the usb-C port. So I would say it's for high end if you like professional people, um, that want a really fantastic Braille note taking device with the power of a desktop computer.

06:06S1

So beyond the original Braille and speak days, which we remember well, it does work very well with email and the web environment.

06:14S2

It does? Yeah. Oddly, on the basic notetaking version of it, it does have links, which was the original web browser for text base, which you can still use with websites these days, but because they're so modern doesn't really work that well. But certainly the Chrome version of it, I remember all the Chrome extensions, like for Spotify and so on. They work beautifully. So even though people say, ah, you know, it's it's it's Linux and we know it's a desktop graphics user interface and it's the Orca screen reader. Now this gives you the same amount of power in most circumstances that using windows would. So a very serious device. And the Pro version is certainly worthwhile.

06:55S1

And it's about 2000 Australian.

06:57S2

It retails in the States for about 1350. So by the time you sort of work out all the exchange rates and that sort of stuff, that's about the right price for it. So, as good, solid note taker that can be both run as a completely full blown desktop, I think it's pretty amazing.

07:15S1

We've talked in the past about BrailleDoodle. You've got some news there.

07:18S2

So this is the little device that you could get a stylus and you'd run it across these little holes, which are basically Braille holes if you like Braille pins. And it would raise up a little magnetic pins or bore. So you could do very quick drawings or Braille and all that sort of tactile type stuff. And it was it sort of came out in sort of, I want to say, about the middle of last year. There were then promising units towards the end of the year, and then they were promising units to early January and February, and I was getting a bit worried. So I just got an email last week and I noticed that they're now saying it more a couple of months, mainly because their manufacturing component of it wasn't really giving them reliable hardware. So some of the pins weren't coming up and other things were going on. 

So they now said they've had a run of a good solid number of units that are up to the standard. So they're now promising the next couple of months, people that have paid their money for the Brough Doodle, uh, will actually get them sooner than later. So let's hope before the end of June, uh, we will have them. So as soon as I get mine, I'll let people know how it goes and what it's like. And if it may be worthwhile purchasing one or not.

08:33S1

There's a wonderful reading app called Voice Dream Reader. It's new owners brought in a subscription model. What's the latest?

08:43S2

What's the lots of people that were using Voice stream Reader that were paying subscriptions to it, uh, got extremely outraged and contacted the actual new developers of the actual program and said, this is not fair. You can't do this to existing users. Existing users should be able to use their existing what they've paid for and not anything else. So what the company has actually decided to do after a fair amount of fairly rapid flashback, uh, is they've decided that new users will actually pay a subscription model. Um, and I believe it's not so expensive as it was. Uh, but at legacy users, i.e. existing users will just keep going on the way they're going. Um, you may want to update in the future as they're going to add more features again in the future. I'm sort of in two minds about this. I don't like the way that the company communicated, the fact they were changing their subscription model. That was definitely not very nice and I think a little bit unethical and that sort of side of things. But on the other side of things, uh, apps have to be paid for because developers have to live. But I think this is a clear message that if you're going to change the way you pay for an app via subscription models, you really have to communicate this far in advance of what you're going to be doing so that you don't leave your dedicated users gnashing their teeth and thinking that they've been hard done by.

10:07S1

There's a program on Vision Australia Radio, Studio 1. Listeners got a surprise the other day. You turned up on it.

10:15S2

I did turn up on it. Yeah, I said, I want to pass the studio and fell in. It was all about. That my opinions of how AI is assisting blind and low vision people. So I talked about all sort of the major characters such as, you know, envision and be my eyes, I and the picture smart from jaws. And I also talked about, you know, how smart speakers need to improve and all that sort of stuff. So it was a really good chit chat about how I thought I was going this year and into the future. So if you want to listen to a about a 50 minute chat on AI, you can pick up that Studio One show from your favorite podcasting application.

10:54S1

There's a wearable device from Metta, the Facebook people. It's called the Ray-Ban glasses. You've seen a review of it.

11:04S2

We used to say that assistive technology is catching up with commercial. I think it's commercial technology is now catching up with assistive technology because what the Ray-Ban meta sunglasses do is very close to what things like Envision and Orcam and other products do as well. So the guy that did the demo via the Apple wiz website, he was able to do scene detection. He could ask it to identify an object, he could do optical character recognition, he could do video calls, he could send text messages via his phone and so on. So and not to mention the fact that he could also use basic eye functions as well. So I just think when you look at something like the end vision glasses and all cams that are being up around about that 6 or $7000 mark, I priced the Ray-Ban Metis sunglasses here in Australia and there are 550 Australian, which is actually very cheap. So what I'm concerned about is that the functionality between the Ray-Ban glasses and Invision or Cam doesn't reflect in the actual price of the product. So I think it's going to be interesting days to see what happens is you.

12:18S1

Ray hyphen Ban, ban from meta. You've had your new zoom devices for a while, an H1 and an H4, which is sort of the middle one in the family of three, the other one, the H6, and you've been using your H4 remotely?

12:35S2

I have, and just for your people's information, I'm actually using my H4 at the moment. But what I've investigated into or purchased is the BT, a one Bluetooth connection from the H4, so it allows my iPhone or my Android phone to connect to it via the H4, a central app. Remember, there's a H6 essential app as well, and the primary reason why I got it was for two things I can control the H4 remotely. So if I was in a lecture or a meeting, I could put the H4 at the front of the room and control the recording of it and monitoring of it via my headset on my phone. But number two is because the file list in the H4 and the H6 doesn't actually speak when you go through the files. When you use the app, you've got full access to the file list, and of course you can trash them, replay them and all that sort of stuff. 

So they're sort of the two main reasons why I got it. And probably the third one is because I don't have my H4 on a stand. It means when I touch it, when I'm recording, you get a bit of feedback from me touching the device, whereas I can turn it on and off from my iPhone. So I've got none of that noise that's going to go through the main unit to disturb the recording. So pretty good and it works out extremely well.

13:52S1

Good stuff. Before we go, a reminder of where there are details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program.

13:59S2

Indeed. So as always, you can check out my blog site, which is David would be a Podbean pod band comm.

14:06S1

David would be supporting podbean.com to write to the program.

14:12S2

You can write to me at Vision Australia where I work, which is David Woodbridge - how it sounds - at Vision Australia - dot - org.

14:18S1

davidwoodbridge@visionaustralia.org .... This has been Talking Tech. With me has been Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology, David Woodbridge. I'm Stephen Jolley. Take care. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.