Telescopic canes, conferences and lots of new tech

00:08S1

Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from December 19th, 2023. I'm Stephen Jolley. Great to have you with us. Wherever you're listening, perhaps through Virgin Australia Radio, associated stations of RPI Australia, or maybe 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 Virgin Australia Radio talking tech podcast, Virgin Australia Radio Talking Tech podcast.

With me, someone who can explain all this tech stuff really well. Vivian, Australia's national advisor on access technology, David Woodbridge David, we'll start with something not so techie, but really useful. It relates to a product available from Virgin Australia's vision store, a new cane.

01:05S2

Indeed. This is the South Korean telescopic cane. And the reason why it's so cool is because, number one, it's got nine segments that basically shoves into an end of the handle and, you know, on those sort of legs that you have, particularly for like bathroom, shower chairs and that sort of stuff where they've got that little button that pops out to keep the legs at a certain level. Well, each time you put one of these little segments out, it pops out a little stud to make it nice and solid. So you basically just keep pulling into the whole canes out, and then it's all rigid and ready to go. And because it's made of aluminium, this is the most lightweight cane I have ever felt and used. And then it also has these reinforced aluminium segments. So where the cane sort of joins up near that little stability button that holds the the cane rigid, it's reinforced. 

So not only is it light, it's also very strong. And I guess if I had to give people a little bit of warning about it, remember, if they sort of fold up canes, they're designed to be more sort of indoor canes rather than outdoor. And the reason why I said that is two things. The the tip, because it is such a beautiful small, you know, recessed cane. The tip is not that big. So you might get it sort of stuck into cracks in the concrete and that sort of stuff indoor. It's perfect on tiles and carpet and all that sort of surface changes because because you get such a great feedback through that aluminium frame of the actual cane. 

The second reason why I wanted to bring to people's attention is that because this kind concertina is back into itself and you've got those buttons, please don't open this cane rapidly. Now when I mean rapidly, I mean just don't go to open up. The whole came up in my little extend the polymers if you do it too hard like I did at karate last week, parts of the cane will actually pull out from the other parts of the cane. And I've done that and it was fixable. Um, I actually got my sighted daughter to do it for me when I got back to home. But you can imagine if you did that very quickly, about to get on a train or in the middle of a city street, and you had no one around to help you, or you couldn't get it back together again, you've just lost your mobility, right? So when you open it gently, so like a sort of a type matching that sort of sounds opening it, it's fine. So you're not going to break it, just opening it normally. 

But when I saw that bit of paper in the the carrying case for the cane that said warning, please do not open this cane roughly or quickly, they really do mean that. But besides that it comes in different sizes. I've got a 54 inch whatever it is in centimeters cane. Like I said, it retracts back into the handle. It's so tiny. It's light, it's sturdy. So as an indoor cane and a backup cane that I always carry around with me anyway. Absolutely fantastic. So again, it's called the South Korean telescopic cane. And if you want to make sure it's the right one that says nine segments, or if you want to go down in the description, it does have that warning about not opening it up too rapidly.

04:26S1

I think you like it. It's available from the vision store of Vision Australia, and the vision store will be closing, uh, as expected over the Christmas period last day, December 22nd. Probably a good idea to get in by midday Monday and then opens again on January 8th. Now tell us about Site Tech Global which happened a couple of weeks ago.

04:52S2

So from memory I think they started in 2020. But it's a series of two day workshop or a conference where they get major players in the field of assistive technology to talk about relevant tech for particularly blind and low vision. And by the way, the word site is actually s I g h t not site, hence the name. But this time around, on the sixth and 7th of December, they had quite a few discussions on computer artificial intelligence, and they had a professor on there from one of the universities in the states talking about what exactly a large language model is, how it's built up over time, and sort of what we consider to be, you know, artificial intelligence or real computer AI type stuff. 

So it was really fascinating. The link I've got in the show notes takes you to the website, where you can listen to all the main stage discussions, and there's also some stuff on there on the on the dot pad and some other stuff as there as well. But primarily I think this year was really focusing quite heavily on AI. So really interesting to listen to and I think you'll get a lot out of it.

06:04S1

The Haber one, which is a nice device for giving people Braille keyboard access to iOS devices, now works with Android.

06:14S2

It does. So I've been mentioning this device on and off for probably the last two years now, and it was only this year that they brought out, and I think it was back in April this year. They brought out an iOS version. And the reason for the app is that that's the way that you can update the firmware or the software inside the Haber one. And for people that can't remember what it is, if you can imagine A8K custom device, but just imagine a Braille cell. So you've got keys going down the left hand side in the middle of this device. So one, two, three. And then you've got the right column of your browser with keys 4 or 5 and six. And then of course being sort of an eight dot brow thing, you've got dot seven next to dot three to the left and you've got eight to the right of of course, six. So a combination of those keys allow you to navigate. 

So I think it was only, I want to say the end of November or the early part of December this year that they released the Android version, which means every time they bring up a new improvement for Harbor One, uh, then you can update it very easily, because I always used to hate updating my orbit writer or even my Revo keyboard. I just felt like I had to do weird and wonderful things to update it. Well, this one you simply... if it's Bluetooth connected across to your smartphone, iPhone or Android, you run the app, it goes, hello, there it is. And you simply press the update button on the screen. You couldn't get much easier to keep your hardware device up to date.

07:48S1

Apple has dropped some new versions of its software last week.

07:52S2

Indeed. So iOS 17.2 and to be completely correct, iPad OS 17.2 as well. But in the iPhone version. And the reason why I mention this because I think it's annoying. It's not available in the iPad. They released a lovely app called the Journal App and basically what it is, it's a journal, or in old terms, it's a diary for you to sort of keep track of your thoughts and feelings and things that you just might want to quote, write down, uh, as you live your life. And I was listening to a very interesting mainstream chit chat last week. So people often, you know, they'll actually often Twitter and, uh, Mastodon and whatever else. And yes, I did say Twitter. I hate using the word x, about, you know, how their day went or how the holiday was. Well, this is not you sharing with the world. This is your you sharing with yourself. 

So it's a way of just, you know, popping down the occasional note. Or you might have just like me, I've just got my karate purple advance belt, so that's something to write down. Um, towards the end of the year for me now, so I can just, you know, I can look back, you know, next year. And so I wonder if there was anything in December that I did in 2023. And the nice thing about these apps that Apple produces, they're not all singing, all dancing, feature rich. They're just enough to do the job. And and I guess from that point of view is that if you don't like the, the basic features of it, uh, because it does give you suggestions, then you can always go and use a much more advanced journaling app.

09:27S1

Yep. And what about the Mac?

09:30S2

The Mac has released Mac OS version 14.2. So Sonoma, it's the name of the operating system version and supposedly exclamation mark. The fix the bug that would cause VoiceOver to respond with. Not responding for safari. When you're opening Safari, you're refreshing a page and so on. Well, supposedly that's been fixed. And I know that's one thing there have been people have been whinging about for I know I almost want to say good decade now, so fingers crossed. But yes, that's that's now a brand spanking new update for me. There's nothing really that stands out besides that fixed.

10:09S1

And the watch operating system also up to 9.2.

10:13S2

Yeah, and apparently I haven't double checked this one, but apparently the watch version, they've fixed the fact that you can do your two fingers swipe again between your watch face screens. If my two year old grandson's over here, I've normally got their Mickey Mouse watch for him. And then when I'm doing my normal workout, I switch back to the watch face for my workout stuff. So it's nice again that they've actually fixed that issue, particularly with VoiceOver changing your watch faces.

10:40S1

There's some very useful, shall we say, tech newsletters that we see each week, uh, the information access news and also the top tech tidbits. They're pretty good, aren't they?

10:54S2

They're actually very well done. Because what they do, they have a lot of, um, if you like, contributing editors, including me, uh, that gives them information about all different types of accessibility. As far as assistive tech in mainstream tech's concerned. The problem I find sometimes, and they do warn you about this, that sometimes this stuff ends up in your spam folder in your email. So it's always a good idea to double check that if you haven't researched it on. I think I normally get mine on a Monday evening, our time and Thursday evening our time. Uh, and of course I use this for when I've gone through all my social media stuff for talking tech as well. But if you really need to keep up to date, or you just out of interest, you want to keep up to date, this is a really great source of information.

11:42S1

Let's think a bit now about the future. Uh, a work in progress is object recognition and screen detection on our smart devices.

11:53S2

I know there's been a lot of talk about object recognition, particularly in the field, and then using AI to interpret, you know, what what the camera's taking a picture of and what's in the field of view and that sort of stuff. Now, I decided with my friend Caitlin to go out and do a bit of a non-official research project, which took about four hours. So we set out with both my Android phone and my iPhone. Uh, primarily we're using seeing AI because it's available on both and also be my eyes virtual assistant again on both. So we went around to, uh, parks, shopping centers, train stations and anything else I could possibly think of. And we took photos and we kept comparing them to what iOS did and what Android did on those applications. And unofficially, the unofficial research, I think we decided that it was about 85% accurate, because what it almost seemed to do it, it almost seemed like it was not identifying an item as such. It was identifying an item based on the location. 

So, for example, when it determined that we were in a park and there was a swing and a seesaw, it decided that the little round thing that kids sit in, which is actually like a round shape, it decided that that was a little toy shed for apparent reason. Um, and it was doing some other strange things as well. So it was almost like saying, oh, look, I know that on the train station there should be this thing there, or I know in a shopping center there should be this thing there. So is I must like it wasn't looking directly at the object, it was looking what things should be in that in particular environment that I was having to interpret of the photo of. It was interesting.

13:44S1

Um, before we go, a reminder of where people can find details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program.

13:51S2

As always, you can check out my blog site, which is David would be a dot podbean pad.

13:57S1

Ben from David would be our dot podbean pod be a incom to write to the program.

14:05S2

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

14:11S1

David Dot Woodbridge at Vision Australia. This has been Talking Tech - with me has been Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology David Woodbridge. I'm Stephen Jolley. Have a good Christmas everyone. Stay safe. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.