Smart walking and blind test driving

00:08 S1

Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from February the 18th, 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 Denikin will come usually on a Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced. Another option is to ask a Siri device or smart speaker to play Vision Australia Radio Talking Tech podcast.... Vision Australia Radio Talking Tech podcast.

With me: Vision Australia's national access technology manager. Damo McMorrow. Hey, Damo. 

S2

G'day, Stephen. 

S1

Let's talk today firstly about a mobility device. And for some time, I guess for several years now we've been waiting for a cane or something like it with some intelligence in it - and at last one seems to have dropped.

01:09 S2

Yes, this is the Walk Smart Cane 2. They did do a sort of a previous iteration of it, but this one is quite impressive for a number of reasons. First of all, it looks and feels like a standard white cane. Some of the others that I've seen in the past have either been insanely heavy and clunky looking, or they've been a little bit light and a little bit flimsy, whereas this really does feel a lot like a conventional long cane. 

There are a couple of notable differences. All of the smarts are kind of built into the handle of the cane, but the previous version of the walk had a sort of a touch surface, whereas this one, they've actually gone with tactile buttons, which I think is quite nice given the way that most of us would would use a cane. Now, I would stress that I'm predominantly a seeing eye dog user, but having said that, I am actually quite intrigued by this one myself.

02:08 S1

You've held one in your hand, haven't you?

02:10 S2

I have, yes, yes. I haven't actually had a chance to put it through its paces, per se, but I have actually had my hands on it. Yes. So we've got a series of buttons on the the grip, if you like. At the end of the grip, there is a Harman Kardon speaker which gives you audio feedback. And there is also a sensor for the overhead obstacle detection. The device pairs to your phone via the We Walk app, and you can then use it for things like GPS directions. And also it has a what they're calling an intelligent assistant. So you can ask it, you know, about your surroundings and those kinds of things. 

And you can also get public transport information, which utilises the the Moovit app and the information that it has. So it I think it has the potential to be quite an impressive and very useful travel companion.

03:07 S1

It looks good when you read about it on the... website, and there's a few demos available. I haven't seen a lot of them yet. The place to go to, We Walk dot zero. Zero. And normally when it's written down, it's capital W and capital W, but all the one word, if you know what I mean. So that's worth exploring. It looks like it's going to cost somewhere over $1,000, but not too bad.

03:34 S2

No, not too bad, considering what they've packed into it. I think that's probably pretty reasonable.

03:38 S1

And... you can order it online, but go to the website. Well... and good luck.

03:46 S2

Yeah, I'm looking forward to putting one through its paces properly and taking it for a walk and seeing what I think of it.

03:51 S1

So that's the We walk. Let's talk YouTube now. YouTube's been around for years, and for many of us it's a go to place. If you think there might be some audio about such and such, maybe even from a long time ago. And that's where you go is to YouTube. But now people like Damo McMorrow and many others are creating their own content for YouTube. Tell us about all that, Damo.

04:21 S2

Sure. So you can access YouTube, obviously through a website. So you can just go to youtube.com - or you can download the YouTube app on your smartphone and access it that way. And some of the Braille devices also have a dedicated YouTube streaming app. For years it's it's been a platform where people could create video content for others to watch. And there's all sorts. There's millions and millions of videos available there on all manner of things. 

But I sort of got interested in creating content a little while ago, and it sort of became a bit of a holiday project. What I wanted to do was to show some of the things that my wife and I do with our caravan and our boat and our meat smoker and things like that, because a lot of people ask us, you know, how do you as a blind couple, how do you manage a caravan and that kind of thing? So that's sort of what I wanted to do. But there was a bit of a learning curve in terms of, first of all, how do you get your content there? 

And you can do that a couple of different ways. There's a white studio app for your phone. Or you can do it via the the website as well... by going to the... there's like a number of tabs, there's subscriptions and there's a home tab and whatnot. And there's one of those tabs is called You. And you can go and set yourself up a YouTube channel and add content. And you can also stream live as well as showing sort of videos that you've made. So I sort of had to figure that out. But then the next challenge was sort of filming. As a blind person, how do I know what I'm filming? How do I make it work? And then sort of how do we put it together?

05:57 S1

Mm, so tell us about all that.

06:00 S2

Okay, so I've been experimenting with a few different... ways of filming things. The simplest is using my Ray-Ban Meta glasses. That works extremely well in that the audio quality is good and I and I can be reasonably confident. That sort of where my face is pointing is where it's filming. The limitation of using the glasses, though, is that you've you can only record a three minute video at a time, and sometimes you obviously want to do a longer video than that. But for for short little clips, using the Ray-Ban meta glasses works pretty well. And you can stitch the video clips together, and I'll talk a little bit about that in a moment. 

The other thing I've experimented with is using a gimbal, which is a essentially a holder that your iPhone fits into, and it clips onto this device, and it has a sort of a handle that you can hold onto, or you can screw a tripod onto the bottom of it. And the idea is that the gimbal keeps the phone level. So you can do... you can use that in a couple of different ways. You can walk along and film. The gimbal itself has little motors, which keep the phone steady and keep it level and remove any sort of, you know, shake from your hand and that kind of thing. 

But the other thing that you can do with it is if you want to be in shot, you can set the gimbal up so that it follows you. So there's a feature in the app you can turn on called Gesture mode, where you can start it recording by raising your hand in like a stop gesture. And then when you start it, if you're in shot, you can then move around, you know, perhaps walk over and grab something off another bench or a shelf and the the phone will kind of pivot around on the gimbal and follow you.

07:39 S1

And what about your voice? Will that come through clearly enough seeing you're away from the microphone?

07:43 S2

Yes, you can use the phone or you can Bluetooth some additional microphones to it. There are a number of different lapel mics and different ways of configuring microphones. So that... works. There are a couple of funny things with the DJI app, which is the one I've got. It's a DJI Mimo gimbal. There are a couple of gotchas with it that I've had to figure out ways of working around where if you tap on the wrong thing, you can very quickly end up doing a slo mo video or something instead of a normal speed. So you do have to be a little bit careful, but it does work and I use that for when I want to talk to camera and introduce the video and talk about what I'm going to be doing. 

The other bit of equipment I'm using is a GoPro... which is a little action camera. They're... only quite small. They're sort of a little square box. And you can mount them on a number of different things. I use mine on a head mount, so it sort of sits on my forehead. But you can also use them in a chest harness. You can use them on a, you know, a bike helmet... or you can attach them to the front of your boat or your jetski or your car. They work quite well because they're a one touch sort of thing to turn them on and off, and they are very good at sort of capturing stuff where you're moving around and that kind of thing. 

And there's hundreds of different ways of... mounting those so you can start them recording and then forget about them. And I use that if I'm recording a video where I'm cooking or I'm walking around the caravan demonstrating something, you know, that kind of thing. So that's the technology that I've been playing with so far. The challenge has been just in in learning how to position things so that I know that what I think is in shot, is actually in shot. And that's just been a little bit of practice and getting some feedback from people on what I'm filming and whether it's worked or not, but I feel like I'm getting more confident.

09:31 S1

That was going to be my question, too, is... How do you get that feedback from people quickly? If you're out on your own with your wife, who's also blind, how do you get that feedback?

09:40 S2

Well, my brother is also a YouTuber, and he's been very helpful and actually got me the gimbal for Christmas and helped me sort of set things up. So I've kind of been sending him a link before I publish the content and saying, Can you just check this and make sure I haven't done anything silly? I'm finding as I get used to it and I understand the camera angles, I need to ask him less and less.

09:59 S1

Any other software you want to tell us about?

10:02 S2

Yes. So obviously, once you've recorded your video clips, the thing is being able to put them all together and there are a couple of really accessible options for us. One is iMovie, which is available on the Mac and on the iPhone. If you're using the GoPro or the gimbal Bull or the meta glasses, everything gets sort of sent to your phone so you can grab all your different clips and put them in the order you want, and then export it out to YouTube or export it out to a file, depending on what you want to do. 

The other one I've been using quite a bit and it's very nice as well, is Clipchamp for Windows, which is a free Microsoft app, and I've only just sort of tapped into a couple of the things that it can do, but it works really well as well for stitching your content together, your clips together. It works very nicely with jaws and NVDA and even Narrator if you're a screen reader user. So yeah, it's nice that there are some accessible tools out there and you can set it up now using AI. There are features where you can get it to transition nicely from one clip to another, so that all the transitions are nice and smooth and that sort of thing.

11:06 S1

People will be curious to find out how all this comes out. So where can they go to catch up with it?

11:13 S2

You can go to youtube.com and then the At sign and theblindtestdrive. All one word. So that's at theblindtestdrive. Or you can just search for "at theblindtestdrive" in the YouTube app. And then when the channel comes up, there's an option there to Subscribe. And that way whenever I put new content up, you'll be able to find it easily.

11:38 S1

Thanks for telling us about that, and we will keep watching out for what you're doing, and perhaps have another chat sometime about what you're up to with your YouTube creation - amongst the thousands, if not millions of others out there who are doing it.

11:50 S2

It's been a real learning curve for me though, so I'm happy to sort of share what I'm learning, you know, in the hope that it might inspire other blind or low vision content creators out there. So as I learn more about what to do and what works and what doesn't, I'm happy to check back in, you know, from time to time and share that information around.

12:09 S1

We were talking last week about keeping in touch with apps that have been around for a little while. Be My Eyes has had a facelift.

12:18 S2

It has, and I haven't had a chance to have a really good look at that yet. But one of the quite interesting features is that it now has a read aloud feature, which means that if you don't use a screen reader, you know, perhaps you use your phone, but you use things like Speak Selection, or you might use Zoom or that kind of thing. Some of the other accessibility features... there is a Read Aloud feature to speak out, descriptions and... those sorts of things now. So it does make the app potentially more useful to someone who maybe doesn't want to turn VoiceOver on in order to be able to use it.

12:51 S1

It won me over with the Be My Eyes feature when that came out, or about 18 months or so ago.

12:59 S2

Yeah, I really love that too... and of course, now you can also access the Be My Eyes caller volunteer feature through... if you've got a set of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, you can access that hands free rather than just through the camera on your phone, which is nice if you're navigating airports and those sorts of things.

13:17 S1

And we should explain, Be My Eyes is where you can submit a photograph, or it can even take the photograph for you, and then it'll give you a very detailed AI description of that photograph.

13:31 S2

And you can also ask questions, so you can say things like, Is this photo straight? Is the... cat in this photo clearly in shot?

13:39 S1

That's Be My Eyes. Go and have another look at it before we go. A reminder that there are details of what we've been talking about in this program and in previous editions on VA. varadio. And to write to us....

13:57 S2

Damo dot McMorrow at varadio dot org.

14:06 S1

damo.mcmorrow@varadio.org - This has been Talking Tech, with me has been Vision Australia's national access technology manager Damo McMorrow. I'm Stephen Jolley. Stay safe. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.