Sam Taylor talks tech

00:21S1

Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from May the 7th, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio associated stations of RPA Australia or maybe the Community Radio Network. There is also the podcast. To ceatch that, all you need to do is search for the two words Talking Tech. And 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... Vision Australia radio talking tech podcast. 

My usual partner in crime. David Woodbridge, the national adviser on access technology with Vision Australia, can't be with us again this week, but we're hopeful he'll be back with the program very soon. So this week we'll hear from a guest who's been on talking tech before. A member of the Vision Australia Access Technology team, Sam Taylor. More from Sam in a moment. 

But first, some pretty important news for anyone who uses Sonos with a screen reader. Sonos is a very popular audio system involving speakers and other devices connected with Wi-Fi, rather than through a wired arrangement. From May the 7th, or in the early hours of Wednesday, May the 8th, here in Australia, Sonos is releasing a new version of the Sonos app for iOS and Android, as well as a web based controller. The troubling news is that accessibility has gone from excellence to virtually absence with these new tools, and the advice is to delay adopting them until the accessibility issues are resolved. 

Remember that once you update, it's very challenging to successfully go back, and so it's not worth trying to do it. Two things I suggest you do. Firstly, turn off automatic updates in the settings so you can decline the invitation to update every time it is offered to you. And for iOS people, you can go to settings and then the App Store. And then within the App Store you can go to the automatic downloads area and turn them off. Hopefully that will also help Android users, though I haven't given you the specifics for that. Then you'll want to stop your Sonos devices updating automatically, so switch to the settings tab down the bottom of the screen and click on system. Now this is different from the systems tab at the bottom of Sonos screens, so make sure you go the right way. Go to settings and then system. From there you can turn off automatic updates. 

Good luck with all of that, and we'll let you know when we learn. The coast is clear for resuming screen reader accessibility on the Sonos tools thanks to internationally renowned blindness technologist Jonathan Mohsen, who, amongst others, has sounded the alarm on this one. And now we turn to our guest, Sam Taylor from Vision Australia. Sam, welcome to Talking Tech.

03:55S2

Thank you Steve and it's great to be back talking to you.

03:58S1

You're a Sonos user are you?

04:00S2

I am. I've been a Sonos user for oh probably 6 or 7 years now. And it's great to have all of your streaming services all in one place and certainly accessible at this point in time. My partner, Kaitlin, and I have about 6 or 7 Sonos units throughout the house the bedroom, the lounge, the family room. And it's it's really nice that you can have them set as a stereo pair in some places, and then, you know, you can just have one in a study while you're completing your work as well. So, yeah, when when they're working nicely and accessibly, they can really be a nice little solution for music enthusiasts.

04:40S1

Let's hope it's all back on track very soon. Let's hope so. Tell us a bit about yourself, Sam. A bit of background? Sure.

04:48S2

Sure. So I've been working in the access technology space for almost 20 years now. I've, I feel like I've actually come full circle in some ways because I started my career at Vision Australia. It was almost, almost my first job back in 2005, although I was working then in the multi-format producing area, for Braille, and that included Braille music. My background is is actually that of... music and psychology, studying music, at university. So I was working quite extensively on Braille music with volunteers, making sure that people had the braille scores and other braille literacy that they needed. But a full time opportunity became available at Humanware in their Sydney office, which was then at Baulkham Hills. 

And that was the start, I suppose, of my moving into, um, a technology role that I really loved working alongside... people like Ramona, Mandy, who would be familiar to a lot of listeners, and we both worked as blindness products consultants. I was looking after New South Wales and Queensland until 2016, when there was an opportunity to move to a national role at Pacific Vision. So I guess for a long time I've been in that technology space. Nowadays I work as an access technology specialist over at Vision Australia, based in Cooparoo in Brisbane.

06:26S1

So what does an Access Technology specialist do?

06:28S2

Well, first of all, I've got the opportunity now to be brand agnostic. So it's it's not necessarily being tied to to one brand, but it's an opportunity to explore and recommend... a solution that works for an individual. Part of being person centred is making sure that we adopt the right solution for the person, and that could be anything, really, from ensuring that people have the right screen reader for the job that they need to do to a Braille device, or even being able to use their iPhone effectively. There's a lot of boxes to tick... and it's really exciting to be able to work alongside so many skilled professionals in this area and so much really interesting technology that's that's emerging as well, Stephen.

07:18S1

I want to explore this one a little with you a bit more. I guess your work is not just about saying to someone, here's a phone, I'll show you which buttons to press, but about bringing them often to the world of access technology.

07:33S2

Many people have not come from a technological background, and I've always felt that it's my duty to ensure that we display technology concepts in a non-threatening and easy to understand manner. And it's the same with Braille as well. I have great respect for manufacturers who can design a device in a way that's elegant, that can be used by novices and also people, that have been a user of technology for many, many years. And one example of that would would be a Braille sense and more recently a BT speak, I think.

08:15S1

Tell me about the technology that you use in your personal life. The access to technology and the mainstream stuff.

08:22S2

I use an iPhone when I think about it for almost any everything. So from setting alarms to driving my washing machine, there are a lot of instances where I would use an iPhone to control everyday appliances, such as an air conditioner or a washing machine, as I mentioned, but I do feel that there is still certainly. The A place for blindness technology as well. I am a user of Braille, and so I do have a Braille sense, and I use a Braille display in collaboration with my windows computer as well, which really assists in... reading aloud. I think it's a very important skill for a blind person, to have. But the Braille display also assists in being able to capture the spelling of names so that when you're writing to someone, there's no embarrassment there. You know exactly how to spell their name. So, Braille serves as a very high priority for me as well.

09:25S1

Between you and your partner, Caitlin, there's a high reliance on access technology. Tell us about how that has changed for doing things you need to do at home over recent years.

09:39S2

Most things that we do involve some type of technology, whether it's shopping for groceries, where by I would either use my iPhone to log into Coles online or Woolies, or I would do it on my PC, utilising a screen reader to using an air fryer. I mean, even a couple of years ago, there would never have been an option to talk to a personal assistant to set an air fryer at a certain time and temperature... and now we do that virtually without even thinking about it. And that's just made a huge difference.

10:12S1

What do you do for personal mail these days?

10:14S2

Nowadays, I tend to use the Seeing Eye app for two reasons. I can either put it in a mode where I can have the whole page scanned for me. The app will take a picture, and then I can scroll through the page at leisure and just pick up any account numbers that I need and copy them and write them down. Or if I just want to identify the mail and ensure that it's something important other than junk mail. I can just use the instant text feature. So I do find Seeing Eye very, very good, just for identifying mail.

10:50S1

Does Caitlin use these sort of tools as well?

10:52S2

She does. She's quite heavily reliant on her iPhone as well. So, the iPhone... would be the go to I think for both of us there.

11:00S1

So there's very much the absence of that helper with eyes that we've all needed for decades isn't there?

11:08S2

Absolutely. I think technology has allowed us to be so much more autonomous and independent. Um, with the exception of some websites that can just be a little bit inaccessible at times. And that's where we would use the Iris service, which I still think is worth the subscription because it's 24 over seven on demand. So even just yesterday I needed to log into my Synology NAS system and write a lodger support ticket, and I wasn't able to do that without assistance. So the beauty of IRA is that they can log in to the computer, with your permission, um, and just make life that little bit easier. They can also take photographs of things for you so that can be using your phone's camera. They can take a photo of some scenery. Or they can take a photo of important documents, like receipts that you might want to store for later retrieval as well. So, IRA is still a pretty major part of my workflow as well.

12:09S1

Even IRA wasn't around 7 or 8 years ago.

12:13S2

Absolutely, absolutely. And only in the United States at first as well. So, again, you know, looking back over the developments and, and the implementation of those sorts of technology and being able to use that out and about in the field as well. It really means that if you're waiting for a mobility instructor to become available, but you still need to catch a train to an unknown destination and cross over a platform, and you've got the orientation skills to do that. You just need that little bit of help. You can call on IRA, to help you along the way to do that. It's it's just incredible, really.

12:47S1

What are you looking forward to in the next, say, 3 to 5 years?

12:52S2

Coming back to Braille just for a moment, I do think that multi-line Braille displays are going to be the future. I'm very excited about technologies such as the monarch and getting those into the hands of students, and also technology from a mobility perspective, such as glide from the guidance company. A while back, we wouldn't have thought that we could take a device that could avoid obstacles, other than a mini guide or a guide dog. And now we're seeing artificial intelligence in these sorts of devices. It's just going to open up a whole new world. I think there's been talk of driverless cars for, for so long and on so many different platforms and in movies... to the point where it's a little bit stereotypical, but but seeing these devices emerge out of some of the, the start up companies and being road tested and, and displayed at places like CSUN just makes it more of a reality for everybody.

13:52S1

I think it's been great chatting with you today, Sam, and sharing your thoughts with everyone. Sam Taylor, an Access Technology specialist with Vision Australia. Look forward to talking to you again soon.

14:04S2

Thanks, Stephen. That's been great.

14:05S1

So just before we go, a reminder you can contact David Woodbridge and his blog site with David Wood BR.podbean.com. That's David Wood-BR podbean podbean.com. You can write to David at Vision Australia - david.woodbridge@visionaustralia.org ...  David dot Woodbridge at Vision Australia dot org.  If you like you can write to me, jolleystephen@gmail.com. That's Jolly Stephen, j o l l e y s t e p h e n at gmail dot com. 

This has been Talking Tech - with me has been our guest, Sam Taylor, an access technology specialist from Vision Australia. I'm Stephen Jolley. Take care. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.