Zoomax, Zoom H4 and zooming in on a world event

00:21S1

Hello everyone! Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from March 26th, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolley. Great to have you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio, Associated Stations of Australia or maybe 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 Vision 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, an item from the vision store of Vision Australia. And this week it's the zoom max. No 12 inch video magnifier.

01:20S2

Indeed. So if you can imagine a 12 inch tablet that you carry around with you and it's number one, the video magnifier. So you point the camera at the back of the unit at anything you want to read in large print. And of course, the number up on the screen. You've got control over that screen about brightness and contrast and that sort of stuff. But it's also got a speech mode. And what the speech mode is, is optical character recognition or what people say is OCR. So that means if you're looking at a restaurant menu and you can't quite read it, uh, even with the large print on the screen, you can get the optical character recognition to recognize the print and read it out to you through speech. So you really do have the best of both worlds. And it's also got a little detachable writing stand. 

So if you want to fill something in like a form, you can actually pop this thing on a stand right underneath the camera, and then you can see exactly what you're signing or filling out. So it really does have quite a few different uses. And the fact that it's a nice, lightweight little tablet means it's very portable.

02:27S1

What sort of money are we talking about?

02:29S2

It normally retails for around about $2,600. At the moment it's around about $1,100. So if you were after a very cheap but good low vision speech output for character recognition handwriting type device, then this one's pretty good, I might say. Also just in morning with a lot of these things that are for low vision people, it's always best that you try before you buy because it really is dependent on your your vision, what your fields are like, all that sort of stuff. So if you can pop into a local vision store and have a look, that's always your best way to go.

03:07S1

And the world changes quickly, doesn't it? There can be products come out that supersede previous ones that were looking pretty good indeed.

03:14S2

Yeah, it's like buying a car one week and they bring out one the following week.

03:17S1

Let's talk about the season event now, California State University, the big gathering, the international gathering of technologists relating to disability and accessibility. What are your reflections on the 2024 event?

03:31S2

Well, I think we sort of as we thought we sort of predicted a little bit a lot of stuff to do with artificial intelligence. So I and quite a few of other things were also announced, as well as some, you know, robot orientation, mobility stuff as well. So there's lots of stuff coming out. Um, quite a few things that we might talk about today, but there's a lots and lots of stuff to talk about. So I have a funny feeling we're probably going to be talking about Sea Sun a little bit this weekend, next week.

04:00S1

So you have in your hands the BT Speak Pro very interesting little device. There were two of them, the BT speaker and the BT Speak Pro that were released just recently. Tell us about them and what your experience has been.

04:13S2

So for people that are in their mature years that were around in the 1990s might remember a thing called the Braille and speak. It was simply a back then it was a six dot braille input keyboard and a spacebar. It spoke out to you and it was mainly all designed around a document. So that was the original Braille and speak. So the new version of the BT speak, it works about the same premise. So you've got your main editor and then you can access files and copy things around. You can have multiple files open and so on. Plus it also has other applications such as scientific calculator. If you link it up to the internet you've got weather and so on. Connects to Bluetooth. You can plug it into a monitor, and you can also plug in a query keyboard. And it actually takes a micro memory card. It's very tiny. It's got eight keys because we've got seven and eight and the spacebar, it's speech output. 

People might remember the old Dicta. So we've got Dicta Speechback. So that's the basic version, the pro version. Because this thing's based on Linux which is a Unix. Type of operating system. You've got a full desktop version in the Pro version, which is basically a full graphical user interface with all the associated applications like Chrome and Thunderbird and so on. Plus, you are using the Orca screen reader, which is a full blown screen reader for Linux, so it's pretty amazing. At the moment, it's still a little bit under development, especially with the note taker function on both the basic and the Pro. Not all the documentation is completed, and I understand they're still looking at how they're producing the physical casing for the unit. 

So if you're a pro type person and you wanted one of these now, then that's fine. But if you wanted a good general solid note taker that you didn't have to worry about, maybe some documentation missing or some features not quite finished, I would probably wait three, maybe six months until the dust settles a bit more.

06:21S1

Yes, we talked over the last few weeks about the new range of zoom digital recorders, the zoom H1, the zoom H4, and the zoom H6 essential recorders. You've had a zoom H1 for a little while. You now have a zoom H4. What are your first impressions?

06:43S2

I think I personally fell into the accessibility trap of thinking that, and we did talk about this, about the the zoom H1. Just because something is accessible doesn't mean it's actually easy to use. So you do have to read the manual to really get the best out of it or listen to tutorials. But the second thing that caught me up because I knew about the first one, is I thought it was going to offer exactly the same functionality that I'm already using in my zoom pod track P4, and unfortunately, at the moment it seems to be a bit of a work in progress because I'm not getting the same level of functionality that I am with my P4. So I think what I've learnt out of this process at the moment is I really have to look at not only the accessibility stuff, but the functionality. 

I think in the future, what I'm really going to focus on about new stuff coming out is does this really change my current work pattern? Will it add more to my current process, and what does the accessibility on top of all that functionality then add rather than going accessibility first and functionality? I should have really gone functionality accessibility, put them both together and have a really good workflow.

08:06S1

It'll be interesting to know what you're telling us about this in about 3 to 6 months time. Indeed, yeah. Human wear announced last week some updates to its Mantis and Brilliant products. The Brilliant Box series 20 and 40. Tell us about those.

08:24S2

So the update was basically aimed at two things. One was power management, which I think is really good because particularly when you're using a broad display all day, which the Bryant is, you don't want to drain your battery too much. So this is a way of being able to manage the power management in your battery on your Bryant 20 or 40. So that's really cool. Plus your mantis of course. The other function, which I thought was interesting was a new mode for terminal mode and terminal mode. That's a function where it's used to connect to a host device, whether that's your your PC or your mobile device. So rather than having the Bryant and the mantis being connected to multiple devices, you can have it just automatically connect to one USB or one Bluetooth device, which makes it a lot more stable connection to some extent. The only problem I've got staying with it is that you go into this thing called diagnostic mode to change the settings. Now, I don't know if they rush it out a little bit, but I would have thought for general users you'd want to go into some sort of user setting mode, terminal mode, and then maybe change, you know, multi-device support for terminal mode, back to single device support for terminal mode. So hopefully that might change in the future because yeah, I just get worried when you've got to start going to some sort of diagnostic mode to change settings on a device. 

09:50S1

Sounds a bit scary.

09:52S2

Sure, it's fine though.

09:53S1

Indeed... Tell us about Arks and their wearable device and their collaboration with Microsoft. Seeing AI and also the navigation and information app Navi Lens. 

10:09S2

This is actually quite interesting. So people that don't know what the AR Vision is, it's a wearable device that literally sits sort of on one side of your face and. If you like, because you can also, you know, of course you can listen to the sound coming out of it. And the camera is designed to look to, of course, what's around you. So scene detection, text detection, all the stuff you could imagine that you would get out of other wearable type artificial intelligence devices. And when you're considering that they've just linked up that hardware, with Microsoft seeing eye on Android and also Netherlands and Android, what you're getting is the power of the camera hardware, then linked up to the power of the software running in Microsoft, AI and Netherlands. So you're certainly getting the best of both worlds. 

I should also say that this is a bit of a trial run. I believe in the States initially, and then we're sort of looking for a full release, maybe 6 to 12 months down the track. But I like it when you see these third party hardware devices linking up with established software, because, as I just said, you're getting the best of both worlds. So I think this is a spot to watch not just for the vision, but also for other hardware devices coming out in the future.

11:31S1

I is coming too, IRA. IRA is the system where you can get human support via an audio video link. That person might be in another part of the world or anywhere they're introducing AI into their offerings with access.

11:48S2

Yeah, I thought this was a really great idea, actually. So you can take a photo and you can get the AI engine to describe the photo to you, but then if you're not 100% sure that the photo is accurate based on what AI is telling you, because we always know it can get a little bit extravagant, you can get your IRA agent to then further describe the photo to you. So if you have taken a beautiful snapshot of your grandchildren, for example, you know, maybe their first time jumping into a pool, um, then you can ask the, the IRA agent, did it get the the photo description correct? And then you can store it or take the photo again. So I think this is a great combination of artificial intelligence. Plus using a (quote) "human." Then to double check and verify that the photo is correct.

12:38S1

There's a lot happening since we first started hearing of the possibility of Be My Eyes AI about a year or so ago, and now of course, Freedom Scientific with its Jaws and Zoom Picture Smart also doing very well. 

12:54S2

Absolutely. Yeah. It's getting more and more amazing. And I still keep saying, you know, I think we've also barely scratched the surface of this. Let's see what happens in 2025 and beyond.

13:03S1

There's a new Braille device coming from HIMS.

13:05S2

That's correct. It's basically, in pre-order state at the moment. It's called the Brow Emotion. Basically, it's an updated version of all the range of what I like to call the Brow sense line of note takers. So you've got speech output, you've got a brow display, you've got all these wonderful built in applications such as a daisy reader, note taker, all that sort of cool stuff. You can also link up to multiple devices. So it really is a full on blown note taker that you can use as a quote note taker, or link it up to your mobile or desktop device online. I saw it was for us 3595. So I guess by the time it comes into Australia and everything else, it should be around about the $6,000 mark.

13:48S1

All the additional features that come with those now indeed quite amazing. 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 AirPod Bean Pod Barn Comm.

14:05S1

David would be our podbean podbean dot-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 Jolly - stay safe. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.