Smart: Alexa, GPS, Glasses and Tech Doctor

00:08 S1

Hello everyone! Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from January the 28th, 2025. 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 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. And guess what day Moz back Damo McMorrow, Vision Australia's national access technology manager. How was your holiday?

00:53 S2

It was great, but, um, it's always nice to be back and good to be with you once again doing talking tech for the year.

01:00 S1

We had some very good alternatives over the last three weeks, but you've still got a job with talking.

01:04 S2

Well, that's good to know. And thank you to the folks who, uh, who, you know, covered, um, some of the shows while I was away as well. I hope you enjoyed the content. I'd like to.

01:14 S1

Talk to you now about one of Vision Australia's many innovative programs, the Alexa smart home program. Tell us about that.

01:22 S2

This program is really, as the name suggests, designed to get people comfortable with using the Amazon Alexa smart speakers. It is open to people who are over 65, and it's funded through the Commonwealth Home Support or TSP program, or people who are on a home care package can also access it. Essentially, what we do is we provide an Amazon Echo Dot or echo speaker, depending on what's available at the time. We have an install partner who comes out and sets the speaker up for you, gets it connected to your internet, and sets you up with an Amazon account. And then we run eight sessions, generally about an hour each over an eight week period, and you're in a small group of usually three other people. So a group of four working with one of our facilitators, and we go through everything from sort of just the basics getting the time, setting alarms, timers, news and weather, you know, right through to listening to Audible or Kindle books, listening to podcasts such as this one, and then also doing things like setting up routines, you know, so that when you speak to the device in the morning, it turns something on or plays the latest news for you or that kind of thing. So because it's a group situation, it enables people to learn from one another's questions and that kind of thing.

02:48 S1

How are all the participants connected?

02:50 S2

At the moment we use either Zoom or Teams. Our help desk team can help you get set up with that before the program starts, and the help desk can also provide you with any sort of one on one help during the program that you might need. If you're having an issue, getting something to work or whatever we can, we can do that.

03:09 S1

For those who may not be familiar with the devices you're talking about. What are these Amazon Echo devices?

03:15 S2

Okay, so these are Amazon's version of a smart speaker. So it's a speaker that you can talk to, you know, so that you can say, um, you know, Alexa, what's the time? What's the current weather? What's the current score in the cricket, whatever it might be. So it's all controlled by voice, which is one of the reasons why, um, these are such an enabler for people because you don't need a degree in computer science, as it were, to be able to drive it. You don't even need to know your way around a keyboard, because everything you do is done using your voice. So they're a really easy device to use, and you can get a lot of information from them. Um, you know, you can even sort of do, you know, video like conference calls with your family and all sorts of stuff. So, um, it opens up a world of possibilities. And we a lot of the people that we speak to who joined the program, you know, perhaps they've stopped, uh, bothering with the newspaper. They may not even be calling family anymore because that stuff becomes a bit of a challenge. They might have stopped reading books. They might have been an avid reader. And so when they find out that they can read their Kindle books again with the device or that they can, you know, set up a routine to play the latest news every morning, it helps people to, you know, feel much more connected again to the world around them. The other thing that I should mention, too, is that all of our facilitators are themselves blind. So they do use this stuff on a daily basis themselves, and they absolutely meet you where you're at, as it were. So a lot of a lot of people enjoy that aspect of it as well, because they can learn from the facilitators, but also the other group members.

04:53 S1

For those who want to express an interest in enrolling in the program.

04:57 S2

The easiest way is to email voice assist. That's all. One word voice assist at Vision australia.org. Or they can ring our contact centre on one 300 8474. Double six. That's one 308 474. Double six and ask to be registered for the Alexa Smart Home program. We are aiming to start the next run at the end of February. So if you are interested in being part of the next program, please get in touch with us and we will. We'll get you enrolled and up and running.

05:35 S1

Excellent voice assist at Vision Australia. For nearly 12 months now, we've been raving from time to time about the tiny little pocket computer, the BT speak. Remind everybody about that and then we'll talk about some recent updates.

05:51 S2

Yes. So the BT speak from Blazie Technologies is a small pocket sized computer with a Perkins style Braille keyboard and speech output. So there's no no braille out. It's braille in speech out. It has a bunch of different applications a text editor and a address book, and a calendar and a bunch of other things. But it can also run desktop applications. So things like Google Chrome or the Thunderbird email client. The founder of Blaze Tech, Dean blaze, also many years ago founded a company called Blaze Engineering and they had a product called the Braille and Speak. And the BT speak is really the the modern equivalent of that.

06:36 S1

There's a gentleman named Robert Carter who runs a podcast, the Tech Doctor Podcast. It's been going for over ten years now. A really good podcast. And he ran a webinar last week at which the Blaze family was introduced. And then they talked about some of the updates and then took questions from people. I commend this podcast to anyone. All you have to do is look for the tech doctor and you'll find it. He gave a very good introduction speaking with Dean Blasi, the founder of the Blasi Technology Company, and with key members of the organization, a very small family company, plus a few other people, his three sons very much involved. They talk about the philosophy of the company, the concentration on meeting the aspirations of users in their changes to their their product. Well worth listening to. So that's the Tech Doctor blog. And podcast is the sort of the name of the web page. But if you look for the tech doctor, you'll find him. And there were some updates announced. Do you want to take us through some of those updates?

07:50 S2

Yeah, the most significant are the fact that they've introduced a better way of file sharing between your BT speak and your computer and doing that wirelessly, much more seamless process than it used to be. So if you're needing to transfer files to and from your BT speak, um, there's a better process for doing that. They've also introduced a feature called markdown in the BT speak editor. And what that does is it allows you to navigate to insert things like headings, bullets, those sorts of things in your documents, but then also to navigate easily through your document using those elements much the same as you might in something like Microsoft Word. That one's definitely handy if you're working with long documents to be able to jump through them heading by heading, and I think that'll be a very welcome feature. They've also introduced enhancements to their media player or audio player, where you can now adjust the playback speed. So for those who listen to audio books and like to do it on one and a half speeds so that they can power through it more quickly or whatever. You do have that option to adjust the playback speed on the fly. So there are a number of other little fixes and improvements. If you're doing a continuous read and you stop at reading, it'll put your cursor where where the reading stopped so that you can resume again. Things like that. So there's a number of other little bug fixes as well, which I think will will make the device nicer to use.

09:23 S1

A fantastic little device. The BT speak from Blazie technologies, the stellar trek from Humanware. It's been around a few years now. It's had some recent updates.

09:33 S2

The stellar Trek is the standalone GPS device from Humanware. It's something I tend to carry everywhere, particularly when I'm traveling. It allows you to get turn by turn directions, record your travel routes, put place markers on places that you need to be able to find. Again, all of those sorts of things. You can virtually browse the map with it as well. So they've made a few changes. They have done some improvements to Bluetooth audio. So if you use the device with something like a pair of aftershocks headphones, Bluetooth hearing aids, a pair of Ray-Ban meta glasses, for example, the Bluetooth connection is now quite a bit more stable. They've also gone through and cleaned up some of the points of points of interest. So they're the preloaded places, things like restaurants, service stations, shopping centers, banks, churches, those sorts of things. Those businesses come and go. Obviously, you don't want a point of interest for a business that's not there anymore. You can put.

10:32 S1

Your own points of interest in there too, can't you?

10:34 S2

Yes, you can. And you record those using your own voice. This device does have a camera on the back of it. There's a number of camera based apps. So we've got a couple of text reading modes. We have a barcode reader and also things like door detection. And so they've made some changes to those so that they perform better in low light conditions. So if you're trying to read a barcode label and you've forgotten to put the kitchen light on, um, you know, it'll perform better than, than it did previously in those sort of low light situations.

11:08 S1

That's the stellar trick from Humanware and some interesting little updates to that one. Updates continue. You mentioned the Ray-Ban meta smart glasses. They continue to evolve.

11:21 S2

Yes. One of the common complaints with them was that you couldn't get it to read a full document, insisted on summarizing it for you. But in version 11 of the software, you can get it to read the entire document. And in the event that it it doesn't for some reason that it truncates, which apparently it still sometimes does. You can just say, hey, keep reading. But yes, you can. If you say read entire document or read the whole document, it will do that rather than giving you a summary or a cut down version. I have tried it with a couple of things, including a menu, and it did work quite well. So version 11, that's a welcome improvement because it was one of the biggest frustrations, I think, with the meta glasses was the inability to have an entire page read to you.

12:12 S1

Such a versatile device. I was listening to a podcast over Christmas. Some bloke out camping did a video and put it up on up on YouTube of, uh, barbecuing. Yeah.

12:23 S2

I don't know who that would have been. Uh, we might actually talk about, uh, in a future episode, my, uh, YouTube exploits, because I've been trying to learn how to film and find accessible, you know, tools for that and learning all about camera angles as a blind person. So, um, we might share that in sometime in the next couple of episodes.

12:44 S1

We'll tell people now where they can find it, because it's very naughty of me to mention it and not say where it is, but it was very interesting. You're supposed to get out into the bush and forget about all your technologies and stuff, but you had it with you and it was making a difference.

12:56 S2

Yes. So I've called the channel the Blind Test Drive so you can get to it. Uh, youtube.com slash then the At sign and then blind test drive. I'm staying away from tech on the channel itself and mostly covering just, you know, how I do the things we do because Marian and I often get questions. How do you caravan. How do you handle your boat? How do you manage a smoker? So it's more about some of those things that we we do and the modifications and things that we adapt in order to make them work for us. So there'll be some cooking adventures, some camping, some fishing, maybe some kayaking. I've got a waterproof camera, so we'll see what we what we come up with over the next few months.

13:37 S1

That'll be very interesting to browse. Well, before we go, a reminder that you can find details of this and previous editions of the program by going to VA radio, talking to VA radio, Talking Tech, and to write to the program.

13:55 S2

Email me Damo Damo MC m o double r o w at Vision australia.org.

14:05 S1

Damo McMorrow at Vision Australia. Org. This has been talking tech with me has been Vision Australia's national access technology manager Damien McMorrow. I'm Stephen Jolly. Stay safe and we'll talk more tech next week. See you.