Interesting O&M apps to test listening and navigation skills

00:08S1

Hello everyone! Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from December 12th, 2023. I'm Stephen Jolley. Great to have you with us listening maybe through Virgin Australia Radio, Associated Stations of Australia or maybe the Community Radio Network. There is also the podcast to catch that. What 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 bridge in Australia. Radio talking tech podcast Virgin Australia Radio talking tech podcast.

With me, someone who knows all this tech stuff really well: Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology, David Woodbridge. David, let's start with an interesting little set of apps you've found that test one's listening skills.

01:02S2

And I wish I had had these apps when I was actually growing up at school, when I was doing orientation mobility about listening and paying attention to my environment. These apps basically test exactly that, so they test what you're listening to for both general sounds and your environment and of course, traffic sounds, movement and that sort of stuff. So there's three apps. So in the App Store and also the Google Play Store, if you search for one word echo viz, so that's EQ Hovis, then it'll end up giving you three applications. And one is called echo vs game, echo vs quiz and echo vs straight. Now the echo vs game one. I got a bit sick and tired of it. 

This one costs about $2 and the other two are free. But the the Echo game one is about you're in a maze and of course you've got to listen to echos and the steps of that your feet make and echoing that sort of stuff. So it was a little bit annoying because I hate maze games. Um, so I bypassed that one fairly quickly. The Echo Quiz one was amazing because what it has is about 75. I think it's about 75 to 80. Fun questions and you've got multiple choice. So for example, it'll say you're on a busy street. Which side of you did the bus turn up on. And then it calls it plays about I think it's about a 5 or 6, 7 or 8 second audio track. And of course, because you've got to wear headphones with left and right stereo channels on them. Or it might say, which way is the cyclist coming towards you? Is it coming from your left going to your right, or is it going from your right, going to your left, or is it coming behind you and going forward so that that's really fine? 

And of course, at the end of it all, it gives you a bit of a bit of a score because it'll always say if you're correct or incorrect out of you have three multiple choices, and then you can go back and play them again. So the one that I found was really annoying was the, you know, you can hear a humming noise. What are you standing in front of a dishwasher, a washing machine or a fridge? Um, and I'll let you guys have a play of that and see which one you came up with. I got it wrong the first time, I might say. And then the third game, which is again, my interesting one. It's the echo vs straight one, and this sounds like exactly what it is you're crossing is straight, but you have to listen to the traffic sounds. 

So a couple of the questions are you're crossing a pedestrian crossing on a dual carriageway. So you know one carriageway each way. So two lanes. When is it safe to cross. So you've got to listen to the cars waiting to stop and start idling. And then you cross. And then it gets more and more complicated because then you've got background sounds, you've got roosters crowing, um, and you've got other noises going on and it gets more and more complicated. The only thing I think I worked out is because it's an overseas European type street, set up the cars near you. I go in the opposite direction. So when we're standing on the side of the road, the the cars are normally going one direction that are closest to you. 

We'll just remember in this game that the cars that you would think will be going right, right the normal way in front of you are on the actual opposite side of the road because of the way the traffic goes, um, overseas. But besides that, really, really fun to play. And of course, I had other questions about if you heard a truck pull up, uh, where is it? Or a bus or whatever else it might be. So the two main ones that I really would let ask people to actually check out, particularly if you've got, um, young people or teenagers learning a bit more about echolocation and taking account of sounds. Really go through the quiz particularly, and then the straight one following that.

04:47S1

So it's called echo vs...

04:50S2

Yeah. So echo is to find all three of them. But if you want to get specific ones in its echo vs new word quiz, echo vs New Word Street.

04:58S1

And they're in the Apple Store as well as the Google Play Store. Seeing I that's been around quite a few years, let's talk about it.

05:06S2

Yes, I think we should do a drumroll. This one. Um, let me just explain. If you don't know what seeing AI is, particularly Android users out there saying that AI is a suite of applications that when you run the application particularly, which is free, of course, you get lots of different quote channels or options, so you get a short text for just pointing your camera at something and having it read quickly. You sort of get a proper document scanning option. You get product info, which is barcoding, you get facial recognition, object recognition, hand recognition, light detection, and so on. This is a.

05:37S1

Product from Microsoft.

05:39S2

Correct? That's right. And it's been available in on iOS for a very long time. Well finally this is what I said about the drum roll. It's now available in Android. If you like me and you use iOS and Android, it's a little bit different because on iOS you've got a slider, um, that you can flick up, up and down between the different options. Well, I think they've had to do it a different way on Android. So the main screen gives you the option. So you've got short text document reader and someone. So you flick between them like you would normally do on a normal application. Then you double tap to activate it. Then you choose the back button to go back. So it's slightly different in iOS. 

But the other thing that's exactly the same is initially this is for Android users that haven't seen it before. When you first go into a quote channel or an option, it brings up a little help thing that explains to you how to use it and what it's for, and that sort of stuff. Then once you have done that, it won't come up a second time unless you're specifically going to help and have a look at it again. Uh, so that tends to drive you crazy when you want to explore the app and you go into different options and it keeps coming up, but once you've done it the first time, it'll then go away and you can operate it normally. But no, this is one of those things to me. The Seeing Eye app on iOS and Android is my Swiss Army knife of AI apps to assist me in my environment, and it's absolutely amazing. So there you go. Everybody who uses iOS and Android now can enjoy the freedom that AI gives you.

07:09S1

Now it must be Christmas early for the Android environment because be my eyes. The AI feature, which has been around in the iOS environment for a little while, it's come to Android. That's right.

07:24S2

So this caused a bit of confusion. Um, last week, because what happened was they announced seeing AI and then that's been my eyes. And it was I thought, well, hang on a minute. Be My Eyes is an app where you contact a volunteer and like the IRA paid service, someone who can tell you what you're looking at and, uh, read out information on a teen or read out a letter through the camera and so on. But what's happened, of course, for us iOS users this year is that we've had the the public beta version of the virtual AI assistant, which basically you take a picture of whatever you might be taking a picture of, let's say, um, a backyard or a playground layout or a building layout inside, like reception and chairs and lifts and so on. And then it will tell you what's in the photo, and then you can actually interrogate it a little bit more so that that option, which is the virtual AI of Be My Eyes, has now come into the Be My Eyes version on Android. 

So when they were saying be my eyes comes to Android, what they were saying is that the be my eyes virtual AI is now in the public initial request feature, so I'm going to run it. Last week I was able to put a request in, so when I tapped on virtual AI, it said, your request has been logged. Uh, we'll let you know when it's going to be available for testing. So now for Android users, not only do you have a full blown scene AI, which also does scene detection for taking photos, but you've also got that option on being my eyes. When you request to be part of the beta testing service.

09:02S1

We'll switch to the Mac now, Audible and Kindle, those apps both available on the Mac.

09:08S2

I should say, up front, because I ran an Apple Silicon chip mac, which is basically all new Macs these days anyway, so it's the M1 chip and upwards. I can run the course iOS apps through a thing called Rosetta, and I thought for a while the audible app would allow you to run on an Apple chip computer. I don't know why, but I tried it the other day just because I felt like trying. I thought, my goodness, I can actually use and listen to all my books now, which I've got about 1300 off. So that was really exciting. But the second thing that got me really, really, really, really excited was that never have you been able to read Kindle books on your Mac with the Kindle Mac app, and since they updated it, I think it's about a month or two ago now. 

So they rewrote the thing. It's now become completely accessible. Now you can't read in continuous mode that we've been used to in in iOS, on Kindle and Android, but you can definitely read page by page. You can jump around your contents, you can do all the stuff you can probably really do on iOS and Android, and it's just. Amazing in my book library at the moment on my Kindle is probably got a couple of thousand books in it, so it's really fantastic that I've now I've got availability of both my audible library and my Kindle library on my Mac.

10:19S1

For those who have a blind show. Classic two phone. It's got nice buttons on it. You can't run messenger Light on it anymore.

10:27S2

No, now it doesn't tell you that it's Mission Delight, I should say, until you try and run the thing because it just says messenger. So I, you know, I use messenger all the time with my family. So I popped in there and read it and it went. Messenger light is no longer supported. And I went, oh. So then it took me to a web page which was not particularly accessible on the blind show. So what I'm trying to let people know about is the positive thing about the Blind Shield Classic two is that you're using a quote launcher, which is basically in Android. So it's taking you to a nice, safe, menu driven environment, and they take care of all the applications running in the background, which is why I said I didn't realize it was a messenger light, but once those apps ever get updated or get broken because, you know, in this case meta, Facebook has taken it away, then there's nothing you can do about it. 

So just keep in mind until either the blind shield code is changed to the updated application, which is the full messenger, or they just take it away completely. From that point of view, there's nothing you can do about it because you can't come out of the Blind Shield. Classic two menu. Run talkback and go and run your normal messenger like the rest of us can do on a smartphone, whether that's Android or iOS iPhone. So I was a bit disappointed by that because it was such a great thing that it works so well. So here's fingers crossed that the developers will know about. I've already contacted quantum and let them know and we'll see what happens, probably in the new year.

11:50S1

Tell us about copilot.

11:52S2

Copilot is basically the AI system produced by Microsoft in particular. And it sort of combines what does combine Bing, which is their big search engine and ChatGPT for. And if you're on Windows 10 and of course, Windows 11, the copilot button is actually on your taskbar. So it means you can access the AI chat system to, you know, ask for coding or ask for travel travel plan information, or ask basically anything you can ask of quote chat GPT. But the main difference is one, because it is. It's also using Bing as its search engine. It's live. So I can actually ask it, you know who won the the formula one this year or who are the top ten drivers for formula One this year? And I'll give you that information. The chat GPT one will only go up to 2022. The free version, at least the reason why I like it running on the Mac is because of course I'm not using windows, so I have to use the web version of Copilot, but I can still use my microphone to speak into the microphone button to ask it questions. 

And it comes back to me with this beautiful sounding, um, female voice. And it sounds really nice. The only thing I wish it would do is like ChatGPT now where you can basically ask it questions and it speaks back to you and you're having a continuous conversation without speaking any buttons. This feels a bit primitive now, because with copilot I've got to press the microphone button, asked the question, and then it comes back and gives me the answer. Then they've got to press the button again. But the two way conversation in, um, the open ChatGPT on both iOS and Android is just flawless. So here's fingers crossed. I don't know what it's like on windows of Copilot with the continuous chat function. Um, but yeah, at the moment it does feel a little bit primitive. It feels like the old days, even if like one a year ago.

13:38S1

Yes. It's amazing. It's moving so fast. Before we go, a reminder of where people can find details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program.

13:47S2

Indeed. So as always, you can check out my blog site, which is David would be dot podbean pad Bayon com.

13:54S1

David would be our podbean pod be a incom to write to the program.

14:00S2

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

14:07S1

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. Stay safe. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.