Smart glasses, canes, earplugs, radar and more

00:08S1

Hello everyone! Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from January 16th, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolley. Great to have you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio or associated Stations of Australia or perhaps 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, to begin, let's go back to that very brief conversation we had last week about Microsoft being and Microsoft Co-Pilot. Can you explain for us the roles of each of those two Microsoft features?

01:10S2

In simple terms, Bing is actually the search engine, which incorporates a little bit of what Copilot does from an AI artificial intelligence point of view, but primarily its main function is as a search engine to find stuff on the internet, whereas Copilot is truly your 100% AI artificial intelligence generative system, which allows you to do research and ask questions and get it. To summarize, texts and emails help you write documents, uh, look at uploaded images and find out what they're about, and so on and so on. Uh, because after I did the show last week, I thought, oh, maybe a bit of check. So I asked both Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Bing if they were the same system, and they came back and they said, no, they're not. They're two separate systems. So apologies for the misleading comment last week, but no, they're two completely different systems.

02:10S1

And significant news has been that Microsoft is going to introduce a co-pilot key on its Windows 11 keyboards. But if you don't have the special Windows 11 keyboard, you can do it with the windows key and see which is very good news.

02:28S2

It is because everybody was talking about the fact that all the new keyboards that are coming out this year are going to have a co-pilot key, and you'll be sitting there going, well, my laptop or my desktop keyboard doesn't have one. But yeah, I think it's a great idea. And, you know, in windows terms, they've always said there are lots of different ways of doing exactly the same thing. And this is just one of them.

02:50S1

Apple news. Now the much talked about Vision Pro is about to become available in the United States. It is.

02:58S2

Indeed. So it's pre-ordering on January the 19th and it'll be available in store on February. The I want to say second in the US it's going to be in short supply. Of course everybody wants one, but this is the first time I really felt comfortable saying, let's let the US have a go at this completely new system. Apple saying it's not an AR or a VR system, augmented reality or virtual reality, it's a spatial computer, uh, which means it actually accesses spatially what's around you. And you can put things in the particular environment like a computer screen or notification. You can access your Mac, your rights, your iPhone, all sorts of amazing things. But what's good for us from an accessibility point of view is we can see how people with different disabilities interact with their system, from VoiceOver users to low vision users to hearing impaired, to people that may have issues with their hands. You know, in a way. And I want to say this in the positive thing, the people in the US are going to be sort of our little guinea pigs, and we can sit back and then say, yeah, look, this looks really interesting, has great benefits. Or perhaps there's a few more things to work on. Let's wait for version two. So I'm really looking forward to the time after it's released to see what people over there do it. Within the disability area.

04:31S1

Apple has discreetly changed its find my limits.

04:35S2

They have so in the Find My Devices tab, you only had a maximum of six two items and one in mind. By devices are mainly mean things like your AirTags for example, and you only had a maximum of 16. Well, apparently in iOS 16 and above. And now at 17, they they increase the number to 32 but didn't tell anybody. So now they've released a support document saying, oh, and look by the way, you can have more AirTags now rather than just 32 because I hit. My 16 limit very quickly, because I was basically taking almost everything in my house to keep track of it. So now if you want, you can exceed that limit now and go up to 32 rather than just 16. So that's good news.

05:18S1

Tell everyone what magic keyboards are and what Apple's doing there.

05:23S2

So Magic Keyboards are those little keyboards that we've been using for quite a long time as a Bluetooth keyboard to access primarily your Mac. And also, you know, I found in your iPad, but apparently there's been a bug for a while with the Bluetooth connection between the physical keyboard and then when it Bluetooth connects to the device that it's using because apparently a hacker close by, as in near that keyboard, can hack the Bluetooth signal to get the key to the Bluetooth pairing, which means then they can actually monitor what's being sent over that Bluetooth connection, i.e. what you're typing on the computer, like passwords and that sort of stuff. So it's a bit of a dangerous one. And like I said, the person has to be in physical proximity to the keyboard, but now they've actually repaired that particular bug and like with your AirPods and so on. Once you connected this device, like the Magic Keyboard, it'll get updated automatically in the background.

06:22S1

Let's talk about CES, the Consumer Electronics Show. It's the big event that takes place in the first part of the year, and some accessibility announcements that might be of interest. So let's talk indoor navigation first. And the AC mobility smart cane.

06:38S2

So this one uses a cane linked up to a smartphone I'm assuming. And what it allows you to do is to navigate independently around a building inside. So they were talking about being in a museum and you could locate a particular artwork or museum display area, and it would describe it to you. This one sounds good in theory, but it would mean that somebody would have to map that inside of the building and update it all the time. So a great idea. Let's just see how it gets implemented. Now remember again, all these devices are coming in this year. Just because they were talked about at CES doesn't mean either one they'll actually come to be in the marketplace or two that will actually go anywhere. So but let's see. Let's keep fingers crossed for this one.

07:28S1

Now, when I first heard about a good year or so ago, the gliding self-driving cane.

07:34S2

This is the kind that uses two wheels and you basically pushes it along and it gives you indications about obstacles that the system's detecting. So it's very much like a bit of a smart car in a way. Uh, so it'll indicate you whether it's an obstacle that you should slow down or it'll indicate that you want to go around to the left or right. Go around an obstacle. It looks very interesting. What they're saying is this thing will indicate to you it will not try and drag you around things unless you don't want to go there. So it sounds like it's more of a by the way, we can go around this obstacle left. Or by the way, there's an obstacle in front of you. So I think that's an interesting way to do it. And hopefully we might see more information on this because again, yeah, I was reading about this last year and we'll see how they go this year.

08:22S1

You found an article about several different smart glasses products.

08:26S2

Yes. It was all sort of labeled into one article, which was a bit weird the way it was labeled, but basically there's a set of glasses to enable better hearing. Um, so it sort of amplifies the sounds around you. So if you've got a slight bit of hearing loss, this is actually quite handy for that. That particular purpose. Second one was about smart glasses to indicate changes in your environment, like again, like obstacles or changes to the footpaths and that sort of stuff. A little bit of hi messaging to say that it would be absolutely amazing and change people's lives forever. And you could get rid of your guide dog or your cane, which is another one that also said that, uh, but we'll see. But again, this is another tool. And again, with all this sort of navigation and orientation mobility stuff, I noticed that people try it out first. If it works, brilliant. If it doesn't, then nobody says you have to use it.

09:19S1

Tell us about Lighthouse Tech and their product.

09:22S2

This one was a lot more substantial than the other glasses that I just talked about to do with obstacle detection. This one was apparently saying that it'll actually be able to do a lot with your environment, identifying objects and all that sort of stuff. So this one's going to be very interesting to look at. But again, I just wish people would stop saying that, you know, this is a time to replace the cane or the guide dog. Um, and like I said with the previous one, this is just an adjunct to what you are using. As far as I'm concerned.

09:56S1

The one comes find and keyboard for gaming.

09:59S2

This is a two pronged device if you like. It's they're going to try and incorporate it into things like the. Controller, the Xbox controller and so on. But for us, blind and light vision people, it's a six key Qwerty keyboard. So by different combinations of those six keys, you can actually effectively type as a if you're on a query keyboard. So they were saying it's not only good for gamers if you want to, you know, type into your text chat box, but it's also good for blind and low vision people because you've only got six keys to to deal with. So let's see what happens with that one. I get a bit overwhelmed with custom keyboards, but if this ends up in, uh, game controllers, there may be it might not be a bad thing to get involved with.

10:43S1

Orcam have moved into the hearing world.

10:46S2

Yes, this is actually pretty amazing because all can we know about the, you know, the Orcam camera and the Orcam read and so on. Well, this is to allow you to do a profile of a person's voice. So if you're talking to a person in a restaurant or a couple of people, and you've set up different voice profiles for them via an app, you can zero in by moving a hearing focus on the screen and you're able to hear them, and you'll be able to hear any sort of background sounds at all. So I think this is a really interesting thing that both it's been developed and to that Orcam is going out into other areas, rather than just focusing on blind or low vision assistive tech.

11:29S1

There's a bit of stuff been happening with head tracking, silent speech, um, whispering into your device, etc..

11:37S2

There has been there's been a few devices that see us that have sort of done this. So one of them is, uh, this sort of dental insert that you get scanned to put it inside your mouth to control your computer, uh, by moving your tongue around in your head. There's another one. If you could only whisper, for example, that you've damaged your lyrics, uh, then this would actually generate either your samples of your own voice or use, I guess, a computer type voice to be able to speak clearly. Uh, so that was also pretty amazing. And there was another device that you could actually muffle your voice, uh, so that people could not hear what you were saying. If you're on a smartphone talking on a phone call, and or it would actually muffle the sounds around you so you could actually concentrate on a phone call, for example. So yeah, so interesting stuff to do with audio there.

12:30S1

Some other service announcements clicks.

12:34S2

This is a mini full sized keyboard if you like quality keyboard for your smartphone. So it's iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 and the Pro versions. Uh, it's only about a third of the size of the screen. It's going to have very tiny keys. You can do shortcuts with it. I'll be interested to see how it actually interacts with VoiceOver, for example. So I think that's one of these devices to keep an eye on because it is a mainstream product.

13:01S1

What about this ring?

13:03S2

This ring is wearing a little ring that if you want to then whisper to ChatGPT or talk to Siri, etc. then you can bring the ring to your mouth and you can whisper to it. So apparently this is rather than hearing people shouting at their device, you can just whisper it to it now via the little ring on your finger shocks.

13:24S1

We used to know them as aftershocks, but their shocks shock Z. They've gone to the water.

13:31S2

They have gone to the water. They had a device back in 2019, uh, which was sort of okay, this is an updated version. It's got a microphone in it now, 32GB of Ram. And it's really good for people that if you want to listen to music, uh, and I guess talk because it's got a microphone, uh, then you can do that while you're swimming now as well.

13:52S1

Lots more has come out of CES. You'll have a link to all that in your show notes.

13:58S2

I certainly will, plus some really great articles from TechCrunch, etc..

14:02S1

Just before we go, a reminder of where there are details of what you've talked about in this and previous editions of the program.

14:08S2

Indeed. So as always, you can check out my blog site, which is David Wood Beer dot Podbean pad Ben comm.

14:15S1

David would be AirPod bean pod b e a incom to write to the program.

14:22S2

You can write to me at vision share where I work, which is David Woodbridge - how it sounds - at Vision Australia - dot-org.

14:29S1

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. Take care. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.