Christmas is coming at the Vision Store Brisbane

00:07 S1

Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition, available from November the 26th, 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 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 [?Dana 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 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. Nice to be with you once again.

00:54 S1

Same to you. And it's getting close to Christmas, so we probably should be thinking about what to put in those stockings. And it's a good opportunity to visit the vision store, which you literally did. Firstly, tell us about the Vision store. The shop of Vision Australia.

01:12 S2

We have a number of physical stores around the country. They are laid out in a way that is extremely easy to move around and to navigate. All the different sections are labelled. The stores are sort of broken up into categories, so you've got all of the sort of kitchen and daily living aids in one section, all of the magnifiers in one section, that kind of thing. They have all sorts of different things, as I said, daily living aids, games, toys, accessible technology, magnifiers, daisy players, all sorts of different equipment. It's a great place to browse around as a blind person. We also have our online stores, which you can access at shop.visionaustralia.org ...

01:59 S1

Shop dot Vision Australia dot org.

02:02 S2

It's again very easy to navigate and find what you want. It's all divided up nicely into categories. There's a very good search function there as well. So for people who don't necessarily want to go in and touch and feel and have a look at things, or people who may live too far away from a vision store, you can certainly do your shopping online and have things delivered to your door.

02:27 S1

Or you can do some preparation for your visit by browsing the website first.

02:31 S2

That's right. And you can also do a click and collect. So if you know you're going to be, you know, one of our sites next week or something like that, you can do your online shopping and then just pick it up when you go in.

02:42 S1

Some nice demos on the website too. YouTube.

02:45 S2

Yes, there definitely is. And we're adding to that all the time as well.

02:49 S1

You went to the Coorparoo store the other day and you sat down with Ruby Lacey. Tell us about Ruby's role.

02:57 S2

I'm based at Coorparoo, so that site is my nearest Vision Store site in Brisbane. So I caught up with Ruby, one of our vision store coordinators. We had a chat about a whole range of different products. We started out with an accessible toy called the Tonies. So I first asked her, can you tell me a little bit about these?

03:20 S3

Absolutely. I love the Tonies Box. I was so, so excited when we had the Tonies Box introduced into our Vision Store range. The Tonie's a tactile and audible toy. It consists of a Tonies Box. The Tonies Box is a cube shaped box with a speaker on the top, and a magnetic platform where you can put your Tonies characters. All of the controls are done by hand. You have two little pointy ears on top of the Tonies Box, and these can be used to control the volume of your. Tonies. The Tonies is an incredibly durable piece of equipment.I've heard that the Tonies Box has been seen by one of our team members lobbed across the house, smashed into a cupboard, and it survived really well.

04:15 S2

Not that we'd encourage kids to do that with their toys, but even with the best will in the world, it happens, doesn't it?

04:19 S3

Absolutely. It does. So incredibly durable. So the Tonies box itself is really a platform to introduce the Tonies characters... when you get your Tonies Box, it comes with one Tonies character, and there's a whole range of different characters that you can get to go with your Tonies Box. And they've really tapped into what's popular with children. So all of the popular things that you can think of that kids love from entertainment, there's most likely to be a Tony in that theme. 

So today, the characters that I have with the Tonies Box, I have a Lion King character. It's a Simba character, and it offers a range of different songs from The Lion King. I've got a Gruffalo character that's a well known children's literary character from a from a popular story, The Gruffalo, which is also actually been adapted from books into an animated series. So it's a really, really well loved character and across multiple generations. So I can remember The Gruffalo from when I was younger, and my children also know The Gruffalo. So... a lot of the Tonies characters do stretch across multiple generations, and you do have some of the newer ones, like your Paw Patrol and and all of those things that kids love.

05:42 S2

So what what happens? You stick the character to the top of the Tonies Box?

05:47 S3

Absolutely. So your little character is magnetic, as is the top of the Tonies Box. And you'll take your character and you'll place it on top of the Tonies Box. And after a brief intermission, the character will prompt the Tonies Box to start playing whatever content is loaded onto that individual. Tony by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. In this particular one, you can hear in the background it will be the novel of The Gruffalo in audiobook form. Awesome. The character itself is shaped like the Gruffalo. Really kind of sturdy, hardy, tactile character with the Tonies Box. 

If I wanted to skip through the first chapter, what I would do is I would take my hand and strike the box on the side and it will fast forward through to the next chapter. If I remove the Tonie from the box, the audio will stop.

06:42 S2

Okay, excellent. The Tonies characters are like a small hard plastic figurine. That's probably, what, 3 or 4cm tall?

06:52 S3

That's correct. Big enough to grasp in little hands, but too big to swallow. And they have a nice, a nice kind of weight to them. Mm.

07:03 S2

Yeah, they do feel solid, don't they?

07:05 S3

I think that's the magnet in there. So they're they're quite a solid toy. Wouldn't want to get one thrown at your head. But that's not where they belong. They belong on the Tonies Box, I think with the Chinese characters as well. One of my favorite Chinese character is the customisable Chinese character. So there are certain amount of Tonies that don't have content loaded onto them, but you have the opportunity to load whatever content you wish onto that Tonie and customise it to your liking.

07:32 S2

So you could perhaps narrate a story or something like that, or record a story or record some songs.

07:38 S3

Correct. And you don't have to necessarily be present with the physical Tonie to load that content on, because it's done through an app, which means that you have the ability to allow people who are not in your immediate area to load content onto it. So I think, you know, grandma living across the country. She could read a story onto the Tonie. You could record things like Christmas messages or birthday messages onto the Tonie. You could read your child's favorite story on it, so you sometimes get a break from reading that story out loud. But it really gives you the ability to customise it in, in whatever way kind of suits your family. And you can rerecord over that. Tony. So once you've customised it, you can customize over that again and again.

08:24 S2

Fantastic. I think if I was a kid in this day and age, I would want one now. One of the ones that I'm really excited to note that we have back in stock is the Tape King... which is a talking tape measure that also has a spirit level. The the spirit level function I really want for when we take our caravan away camping. So I can level the van myself because I can't see the little bubble thing that's on the, on the drawbar. But the number of times that we find at home and we're about to start sort of doing some renovations and things, and I want to be able to measure stuff. So really excited that we have a talking tape measure in once again.

09:03 S3

Yes, as am I. It's actually been a long time waiting. So we've been greatly anticipating being able to have this talking tape measure again. It's such a... great object to have for all of those things you've described. And there's been a real hole in the vision store that the tape measure used to fill. So we're really, really glad to have it back. So the tape measure itself, you have the talking measuring function, of course. And as you mentioned, the spirit level function as well. You also have the ability to add up and memorise. So if you have to do things in more than one kind of extension, it can remember the measurement before and add it up. So if you were measuring an area that was longer than the total length of that tape measure, it's able to add that up so it can give you the total length of, say, a room.

09:57 S2

That's definitely going to be handy because of course, the minute you're doing any kind of renovations at home, you go into a carpet place and they say, well, how many square meters of flooring do you want? You go, I don't know. So I think that's going to be really, really helpful for me. So as you pull the tape out it speaks.

10:13 S3

That's correct. So I'm just going to get this this Tape King started. We're just going to turn it on. I'll just do a little demonstration by just pulling out the tape. Measure a small amount and we'll just get a reading from that.

10:31 TAPE KING VOICE

Ten centimetres, four millimetres.

10:34 S3

So at the moment I have it set in centimetres. If you're not really a metric guy you could change that to inches.

10:42 S2

Now I'm really excited about that one. I think that's that's going to be a huge help for me. The other one that I'm really interested to hear about is the Colorino color detector. I have tried over the years to use some of the sort of color detector type phone apps, but I've never found it works as well as a color detector that you can actually press against the clothing and sort of eliminate other external light sources and things. Tell me about this one.

11:09 S3

So the Colorino is a small handheld device, sort of rectangular in shape. It's probably... let's have a look at what the Tape King says. Let's find out exactly how big this one is.

11:21 S2

Yeah. Why not?

TAPE KING VOICE

11cm.

11:23 S3

Okay, so your Colorino is 11cm, on the bottom surface. You have a battery cover. So this one just takes standard batteries. It is not a rechargeable device. On the top side of the device, you've got a speaker and you have two buttons. The front of the device has the lens that acts as the color detector. So I'm just going to turn the Colorino on. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to hold it towards this Tonies Box. I'm having a look around this room, and I'm finding a lot of things are really nondescript colors. So I want to give the Colorino a fair chance to give us a good reading. So I'm just holding it up to the Tonies Box intensive.

12:08 COLORINO VOICE

[Intensive] Red.

12:09 S3

Were you able to hear that? 

12:11 S2

Yeah. Intensive red.

12:12 S3

Intensive red. I'd say that's a pretty good interpretation. The Tonies Box. I've always described it as red, but I think I'll now be calling it intensive red. I think that's a very fair description. Yeah, it has a lot of applications, as you mentioned. It can prevent you from committing crimes against laundry. It can make sure that things that you're wearing are coordinated and make sure you're wearing the appropriate gear if you're going to go support your favorite team. Yes. Yeah. No faux pas at the football with the Colorino.

12:41 S2

That's right. Which is definitely handy. Thank you very much, Ruby, for joining me for talking tech. And I want to take the opportunity to wish you a merry Christmas, and I hope that we get lots of people through the store between now and Christmas time.

12:56 S3

Thank you so much for having me, and Merry Christmas to everyone listening, and I hope to see you in the Vision Store.

13:02 S1

And Happy Christmas to you too. Ruby. Ruby. Lacey speaking there with Damo McMorrow at Vision Australia's Vision store in Coorparoo, Brisbane. But there's lots of those stores around the country at various Vision Australia sites, as well as the online shop Dot Vision australia.org. Damo, let's just let people know how much money they'll need for these wonderful devices.

13:27 S2

Sure. So the Tonies Box is $199:99 - that comes with one figurine, and the additional figurines are $29.95. If Marian wanted to buy me the Tape King talking tape measure... that'll cost her $550 and the Colorino color detector was three $399:99.

From the Vision Australia Vision store, available through shop.visionaustralia.org or at our various centres around the country. Before we go, a reminder of where you can find details of what we've been talking about in this program. All you need to do is go to VA Radio - Vision Australia dot org slash Talking Tech, VA Radio Vision Australia, dot org slash talking tech. And to write to the program, Damo - Damo McMorrow, m c m o r r o w at Vision Australia dot org.

14:30 S1

damo.mcmorrow@visionaustralia.org ... This has been Talking Tech, with me has been Vision Australia's national access technology manager Damo McMorrow. I'm Stephen Jolley. Stay safe. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.