New surveys, Braille, phones and more

00:08S1

Hello everyone! Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from January the 22nd, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have you with us listening through maybe 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 Dan. It 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, Virgin 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 and David, you were off explaining the technology somewhere else on Vision Australia Radio recently. I like the idea of being able to talk about other programs on our network.

01:04S2

It is good. I was actually on the Studio One podcast with Sam Richard, and we were talking about all the different types of technology that people actually can use, smartphones and TVs and all sorts of wonderful stuff. So if you want to listen to it, go into your favourite pod catcher and check out this Studio One podcast feed and have fun having a listen.

01:29S1

That's a good program to keep up with each week to studio one from Virgin Australia Radio. We talked a couple of weeks ago about the web Aim Screen Reader survey. It's a worldwide initiative and the closing date is very soon.

01:46S2

Yeah, so it's the end of January. Uh, January 31st, 2024. And this is a way that the people can keep track that do these surveys. So this is the 10th one of what's currently happening in the realm of access to digital things in the world, whether it's the World Wide Web, uh, whether it's PDF files, whether it's desktop mode for Android, iOS, all that sort of stuff. So it's a really great way of seeing what's happening and what the trends are in the world. So as you know, it's Android, uh, getting bigger and better versus iOS. Is the Mac growing? Is it shrinking? Are people using windows more and so on. So it's a really great thing to get involved with. And of course we want really relevant stats across the whole world. So if you haven't done it yet, check out the show notes and certainly do the survey. And it'll literally only take you less than about ten minutes.

02:39S1

Yeah. The great thing to do Apple is many of us know about Apple visits, really the accessibility community for Apple products. And Apple is has its Apple Vision report each year on Apple accessibility. What do they say in this time?

03:00S2

Overall, I don't think it really changes that much because what they really wanted to say is, of course, low vision seems to be reasonably okay. Uh, when it comes to, uh, apple supporting blind people with speech output i.e voiceover, um, and Braille support, there seems to be a still a bit of a glum mood around that. It's still not quite there yet. There are some things, particularly for Braille, that people are not satisfied with, the same bugs or the same issues keep reappearing and you sort of get to a stage where you think, well, why would I want to keep giving feedback if such a big multinational company like Apple doesn't pay attention to it. So hopefully this will feed back into the Apple accessibility folks at Apple in Cupertino in the US, and hopefully they'll take it on board. So this type of feedback is still important. So I'm not saying don't bother. Um, but what I'm saying is that, you know, it's like writing a letter in the sand every time the waves come in, it washes it out, and you've just got to keep doing it over and over again. And unfortunately, that's part of being an advocate.

04:10S1

And accessibility is going to be really important with this new generation of Apple products. The Vision Pro.

04:19S2

Indeed. Because to me, this almost feels like going from the old days of, you know, mS-DOS, which was a text based operating system, command driven, one to a graphical user interface, windows. And when that happened, we all sort of threw up our hands and went, oh dear, what's going to happen to blind people in particular? But this to me with the Vision Pro, I'm really looking forward to it. Now. I know I said last week, you know, the pre-orders are out. It's going to come out the 2nd of February in the US. Um, I'm looking forward to people getting their hands on it for accessibility testing in the States. And it's going to be interesting because I think this is one of these things, particularly about spatial computing, that as blind people we've never really experienced before, we've had a bit of a taste with it, with things like the CIA app and lidar and that sort of stuff. But I think when you can put stuff in a special place so you can park your mail over a particular spot, and you can park a notification somewhere else in your app, somewhere else. This is a very interesting thing for blind people to get involved with. So all this stuff they're talking about by watching TV shows and movies and doing all sorts of fancy visual stuff, that's all well and good, but it's also got some amazing stuff. Can you imagine having it your eye level, running an app like CSI, which I'm sure is going to work on the headset, uh, being able to use that at eyesight head height again and being able to identify objects in your current location, that's going to be amazing.

05:49S1

So a real pivotal moment really in the progress of wearables, isn't it?

05:55S2

Look, I think so. And this really extends the the boundaries of what's what's happening. And that's why I think that Apple didn't call it augmented reality or virtual reality. Or there's another one I can't remember the name of now, but it's called XR. This is really spatial reality. This is putting objects in your environment that benefits you.

06:13S1

If people want to find out more about Vision Pro, there's a bit of stuff out there on the web now from Apple.

06:18S2

There's lots of stuff on the web, so you can really delve into, you know what the vision probably even looks like, what the apps will run when they talk about things like windows and volumes and that sort of stuff. What what's meant by all that sort of stuff. And there's a really good intro video where they got a quite surprising new person, uh, working with the Vision Pro, um, in an Apple Store. And it was extremely well done. And of course, it's very well described. And as with all Apple's ads, you've always got the ad stuff happening anyway.

06:52S1

And you're happy to be sitting back and seeing what happens in the States where it's being released. Now before we get the opportunity to put our hands on it in Australia and other parts of the world.

07:03S2

I am, I'm going to be really enjoying seeing how other people that I've got the disability perspective, look at this headset and say, you know what, these are all the different types of things you can do with the headset. Um, because I remember on I think it was on Twitter last week, somebody said, oh, but look, it's not going to be accessible because it's all visual. And I said, well, if you go back and look at Wwdc in 2023, they actually had a whole demo on accessibility that was built into the headset. So of course we've got VoiceOver, we've got zoom, we've got all sorts of other things. So it's not just your eye movement, but your gestures and your voice. So like all Apple products, it's going to be 100% accessible a course. There'll be things you won't be able to do as a blind person, but my goodness, you'll be able to do a heck of a lot as well.

07:54S1

In 1989, for use in the workplace, I got my hands on a device called Braille and speak from Blazey Engineering in the United States. It was the brainchild of a man named Dean Blazey. Um. He's back.

08:12S2

He's back now, this really does feel like a time jump to me, because he's back with a new business called Blazey Tech, which is very familiar with his name. And the two devices that he's reintroducing to the market this year is the BT speak and the BT Speak Pro. So they're both basically are two Braille input speech output no takers. So there's no braille display on them. They're just like the original Braille and speak typical notetaking type things such as an editor, play music, stream music, calendar, stopwatch, clock, all that sort of stuff. Uh, the pro version. It will also allow you to run desktop applications like social media office type apps, keeping in mind that this is based on Unix. So it's literally a shell running on top of this platform, which is going to be the BT speak show. But you can actually boot into this thing and run orca, which is the Unix screen reader. So it's going to be absolutely amazing and in all measurements because I'm an old person now, so to speak. Um, it's six inches long, two inches in depth and about half an inch or a little bit bigger in depth. So to me, that was roughly about the same size of the original Braille and speak, which I had in 1990. So I'm a bit sad, Steve, that you got one before I did back then. But, um, it's really great to see that. And oddly, Stephen, it actually uses the desktop voice. I haven't heard the desktop voice for a long time, so it's going to be nice to hear Paul and someone on the beat speak again.

09:49S1

Might cost a few bucks, though.

09:50S2

I think in Australian dollars it's going to be probably around about a $3,000 mark. Hopefully I'm wrong. Um, but it's been show showed off at the Atea conference next week in Orlando, Florida, and we'll just see what happens about the price.

10:05S1

Tell us about the Samsung S20. For range of phones announced last week.

10:10S2

Smartphones indeed. So this is the new Samsung range. So you got the S20 for the S20 for plus and the S20 for ultra. So it's all the premium phones from Samsung. And they were talking about an AI feature in particular. And mind you, the whole thing was about AI in a way, was this benefit of where you can talk on your phone and up to 13 languages. The other person hears the language that you chose for them. So if you're speaking in English and you're speaking to somebody in Spanish, they will actually hear a voice talking in Spanish. Now when they speak in Spanish, it will get automatically translated to you in English. And that's pretty amazing. And another thing they showed off, which was more of a Google feature than a Samsung feature, I believe, and I don't know how this is going to work with assistive technology like talkback at the moment, but you can draw a circle around anything on the screen. So let's say it's a picture of a flower, a picture of a car, a picture of a building, and by drawing this circle around it, you identify to the eye that that's what you would like to search for on the internet. Um, or I'm assuming in some language large model thing LM that AI is based on, and it will give you information based on that search that you've just circled. So it'll be interesting to see how that works with access technology. But again, the whole the whole phone was built around AI type of information to do with photos and messages and videos and all sorts of stuff. So let's just see where that goes today. I'm probably still not going to budge and I'm going to keep happily using my Z3 flip. But no, it's really fascinating. And we did. So this year it's all going to be about AI. Absolutely. And Samsung has certainly proved it with these three new phones on the market.

12:01S1

With people getting back to their studies and people continuing to do things in the workplace, it's probably a good time to talk about gadgets and technologies and stuff. You've got a whole list of devices that you'll have in the show. Notes. I want to talk to you about the desk environment at the vision store of Vision Australia. There's a nice little holder for the smartphone.

12:26S2

It is. It's called the Arcon Desktop Stand. And basically you can put your phone in it and you can literally point the phone in any direction you like down, up, sideways, upside down, horizontally angled, blah, blah, blah. So it's basically a 360 angle, and it's really good for low vision access to turn your phone into a video magnifier for video conferencing. And of course, if you're a blind person using optical character recognition and so on. And it's a really good stand. And by the way, it actually sort of collapses down to be very tiny. Uh, the base is a little bit big, but you can certainly pull the, the pole off that holds up then the articulated arm that holds your smartphone.

13:06S1

Yeah. And how much is that one.

13:08S2

So it's about $180 for that one.

13:10S1

Tell me about the daylight smart go lamp.

13:13S2

One of the things about love in particular is to have task lighting. So whether you're looking at a piece of paper while you're handwriting, uh, why you're maybe examining some photos again, you know, your hard copy photos or doing any other types of tasks that you need good lighting for. It's really good to have these type of desk lights that you can have different brightnesses depending on what you're looking at and what your environment's like in your house and your room and so on. So I always recommend to for low vision people, it's really beneficial to have a task lighting because it's directed lights rather than having your light in your room. In general, this is a much more focused, if you like, spotlight on what you're doing.

13:59S1

And just before we go, a reminder of whether details of what you've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program, indeed.

14:06S2

So as always, you can check out my show notes on the blog site, which is David, would it be a dot podbean pad bayan com.

14:14S1

David would be a dot podbean pod be a incom to write to the program?

14:21S2

To write to me at Vision Australia where I work. You can email me at David Woodbridge Heart Sounds at Vision Australia-dot-org.

14:28S1

David Woodbridge at Vision Australia-dot-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.