00:00:08
S1: Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from March the 14th, 2023. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have you with us. Listening may be through Vision Australia Radio, associated Stations of Australia or the Community Radio Network. Also there is the podcast to catch up with that. All you need to do is search for the two words talking tech and Dan 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. With me someone who can explain all this tech stuff really well. Vision Australia's National Advisor on Access Technology, David Woodbridge. David, last week we spoke about the iPad, a tactile display device. You've done a podcast about it. I did.
00:01:05
S2: So what happened was when these people were actually over here, I did a podcast when they were down in Sydney with me having a look at the tactile graphics Braille display and 20 saw bar display all in one device. And what happened to me was that my phone went dead. But of course nobody realised because I had screen curtain on. So when they got back to South Korea last week, I did a number of follow up with Jessica Lee, who is their main marketing person for global relations, and we did another podcast which was a bit of an overview of the dot pad itself and where they're going to be at Sea Sung this week. So if you want to catch up with that about an eight minute in-depth look at the dot pad, then have a listen on my ESI podcast feed.
00:01:46
S1: Just very quickly, remind people what the dot pad is.
00:01:49
S2: This is the graphics display tablet, which is about the size of an iPad, but double the thickness and that displays either images from the Internet or from your computer or from drawings that you do on your iPad under the graphics display, including Braille labels. And then the 20 cell Braille display at the bottom of the device also works as a general refresher Braille display. So it's a pretty unique device. When you're on the home screens of your iOS device. It brings up the graphics for each icon on that graphics tactile display as well. So pretty unique device. As I mentioned the other week, it's currently only for commercial availability in South Korea. And I believe over the next several months or so, Dot Inc. is going to be looking for distributor ships around the world. Hence why Vision Australia is currently looking at the product from an evaluation testing point of view.
00:02:40
S1: And we may see it out in schools and libraries and other places in time. Indeed, staying with tactile display devices, tell us about the monarch.
00:02:51
S2: So this is a device from AP and Human Wear that was originally called the Dynamic Tactile Graphics Braille Display Device. AP is American Printing House for the Blind. And what its changed its name into. So it feels like a bit of a, you know, a life change. It's changed into a butterfly called the Monarch because it's like when you're reading the multi-line Braille display, it's like the butterfly technique, which I've personally never heard of before, about how you sort of use one finger to track to the end of the line and then your other finger when you're halfway across, you go back to the next line down and go backwards. So that's why they call it the sort of the butterfly technique. But anyway, so they had a 31 minute description of the monarch and its implications for education. And I just wish they were a little bit more descriptive about the actual device itself because they talk most of the time about and I guess it's quite serious, its implications for education because they're going to be developing this new sort of a daisy format. And Daisy really is a format where you can navigate by chapter, page, paragraph, headings, all that sort of cool stuff to get really through a a textbook properly and also to be able to access tactile graphics in the same book on the same tactile display. And what they said was this is squarely aimed at the education market because there's nothing worse than getting a Braille book followed by volumes of tactile Braille graphics, which I think I said in one textbook in particular, I think they said it cost about $30,000 worth of work to get it all done. And even then the book was getting getting to the student. Whereas if you can produce this e-book electronic Braille file, which contains not only the, you know, the text slash Braille, but also contains all the graphics, the tactile graphics, then you know, you're on a winner because it doesn't take that long to prepare as opposed to doing all the manual work. So again, it's like the dot pad with the tactile graphics display. It doesn't have a brow display. It's only if you like an electronic textbook reader for reading text textbooks. And again, as I said initially, it's really aimed at the education market. And we're looking for hopefully a sort of a big, big launch, hopefully in 2024. So at the moment they're really only talking about beta devices being with people as they put it through its paces. At the moment.
00:05:20
S1: A much loved champion of the accessibility community, Shelley Brisbane, appeared on a podcast recently.
00:05:28
S2: She did, and one of the main reasons I'm bringing this, besides the fact that Shelley Brisbane produces or this particular book called Excess for All, absolutely fantastic book is I always want to applaud podcasts that are mainstream in particular, and this is the one from the Twit network this week in Tech, and I just love it when mainstream podcasts spend time. In this case, it was the whole podcast talking to Shelley about the amazing accessibility features in the iPhone, etcetera. So, you know, I just wish this would happen a little bit more. I mean, I know people like Rene Ritchie and other people have done similar mainstream podcasts of their own about accessibility. But when these pop up every now and again, I just like to not only applaud the author in this case, Shelley, about her fantastic book and getting the word out, but the fact that it's being talked about on a mainstream podcast, so check it out. It was in the latest podcast last week, so have a look in there in your favorite pod catcher.
00:06:32
S1: Now there's a great little organization in Australia called the Access Technology Users Group who meet online. And you were a guest last week.
00:06:43
S2: I was. I went on to talk about the sensible air conditioning or AC device, which is the one that you link up to your split system air conditioner. So you control it. So rather than having to, you know, look at the remote control, you can access it via the sensible app on your iOS or Android device via the website or via your smart speaker of choice. But the other reason I wanted to remind people about the Access Technology Users group organised by Adam Morris is it's a great way of catching up with sort of main technology for assistive tech or other technology once a month and they have really great topics on when they've had a chat about the the sense player from hims already. I believe they may be looking at the new Victoria stream next time. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to put the contact details for the Access Technology Users group in the show notes. And if you want to, you know, be part of the whole process and subscribe to their mailing list and literally you only get told about when the next one is on, you're not going to get spammed or anything. It's a really great way of. Technology, of course, besides talking tech.
00:07:53
S1: Excellent. Now, I do want to take you back to the sensible device. We use it to control our aircon system. Very handy to tell it to switch on, change temperature, etcetera. Quite accessible. It's been around for a few years now.
00:08:08
S2: It's a really great device. I've had mine for, you know, 5 or 6 years as well, and mine actually broke for some odd reason. So I very, very quickly went out and bought another one.
00:08:17
S1: I should think so. Tell me about the active Braille display that they've been talking about on Apple Vis.
00:08:24
S2: Yeah, this was reviewed by Scott Davitt. This bright display was the active 40, so Braille display from a company overseas somewhere, which I don't think he actually really said in the article is that Apple views. But what caught my attention is I don't know if this is on other Braille displays, but it has this feature where when you get to the end of the brow line and I can't remember the exact technical term for it, but they must have a touch surface or a sensor that when your finger hits the end of the line, it automatically scrolls the beginning of the next line. So as soon as you bring your finger back to the beginning, you're ready to start reading the next line without having to be a manual person and press the the next panning button or the next longer button. So I thought that was quite interesting. Its feature set reminded me a little bit of the Bryant range. So for example, you had a clock app in there, an editor and a few other options, but I just thought, well, you know, it's interesting when these devices come out how they implement different things slightly differently. And the other thing that sort of reminded me about the Braille a little bit is apparently by default, it has iPhone compatibility mode, which will work with both Mac and iOS, of course. But then when you want to use it with Android or Windows, you've got to turn off the default iPhone mode. So I just wish sometimes these things weren't a bit fiddly as they are.
00:09:46
S1: Speaking of iPhones, Apple have released a yellow iPhone 14 and 14 plus.
00:09:52
S2: I know. And apparently it's not just yellow, it's yellow. So it's a very bright yellow color. It's funny because every time I think about a yellow, I think of a Volkswagen Beetle, but that's beside the point. It's a way of, I guess, Apple reminding people that, you know, the iPhone is still here. It's not a new iPhone, but it's an exciting new color. So if you want to stand out in the crowd, that's beside the fact that if you put a case on or not, then you can have a yellow iPhone. You don't get the yellow color in the iPhone pro or the pro max, because obviously people that are professionals don't need different colors. They just need standard personal colors. But, you know, if you've been hanging out for an iPhone 14 or 14 plus and you want a different color to stand out in the crowd, then the yellow one is currently available for you.
00:10:37
S1: Many more bands available for the Apple Watch.
00:10:41
S2: I know 20 different colored bands now available now. I think they're still the same band. So you've still got the the solo loop and the fluoro elastomer, otherwise called the rubber band loop and so on. But you just get them in different colors now. So in typical Apple fashion, you've got purple fog. I don't quite know what purple fog, but anyway, you've got purple fog, you've got midnight black and all these amazing words to describe these amazing colors that we just know is, you know, green, blue, red, black, etcetera, etcetera. But if you like me and, you know, you've only got 13 Apple Watch bands and you might want another couple more of different colors, particularly if you're low vision, then they are now available in the Apple store. And if you want to go into the Apple Store app, you can find both the yellow iPhone there for ordering and of course, the 20 Apple Watch bands.
00:11:37
S1: For some music lovers, Apple's classic music app will be available by the end of the month.
00:11:43
S2: Yeah, this has been talked about for a very long time. When I say a very long time, I'm pretty sure it's about two years now, which in technology terms is a very, very long time. So it's for people that want to focus purely on classical music. So your favorite composer or your favorite version of a particular classical music? And what I didn't say in the article is what sort of subscription that's going to cost you, because I'm assuming it's going to be like, you know, different types of Apple music that you can get your hands on that if you want sort of the premium one you probably have going to have to pay for it. So in us terms, it's available on March 28th. Now, they didn't say where it's going to be available worldwide, but here's hoping it's not just a March 28th release in the States. It's also available worldwide. So if you're a classical music lover, then this is your chance to get stuck into it.
00:12:36
S1: The big Access technology event season taking place this week.
00:12:42
S2: Indeed. So this is a sea song. So the California State University Technology Exhibition and Conference. So they have lots of workshops, the exhibition hall lots and lots of distributors. So I think over the next couple of weeks or so, we'll be getting news items coming out there as major manufacturers and developers and organizations make announcements. So stand by for the next couple of weeks.
00:13:03
S1: And tell us about the Microsoft Ability summit, which took place last week.
00:13:08
S2: So this was looking at sort of the higher level policy type stuff and some new exciting stuff coming out of Microsoft, like the new stuff to do if the thing I up with indoor navigation and. The new assistant accessibility assistant coming in and Microsoft. So it's sort of a very high level talk. It's quite interesting. The chief accessibility Officer did a really nice blog that I've got in the show notes covering what was talked about at the Ability conference. Like I said, it's a high ranging conference, but I just wish, Steve, that this stuff would trickle down to third party developers for, you know, smartphone apps and workplace apps, in particular applications to make them more accessible. That's what I want to see. You know, it's fine to talk about it, but let's see it in action. Mm hmm.
00:13:52
S1: 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.
00:13:58
S2: Indeed. So, as always, you can check out our show notes on my blog site, which is David would be a dot PODBEAN pad B and.
00:14:05
S1: David would be dot PODBEAN podbean.com. To write to the program, you.
00:14:12
S2: Can write to me at Vision Australia where I work, which is David Dot Woodbridge. How it sounds at Vision Australia.
00:14:17
S1: Org David Dot Woodbridge at Vision Australia. Org This has been talking tech with me has been Vision Australia's National Advisor on Access Technology, David Woodbridge. Take care. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.
S1: Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from March the 14th, 2023. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have you with us. Listening may be through Vision Australia Radio, associated Stations of Australia or the Community Radio Network. Also there is the podcast to catch up with that. All you need to do is search for the two words talking tech and Dan 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. With me someone who can explain all this tech stuff really well. Vision Australia's National Advisor on Access Technology, David Woodbridge. David, last week we spoke about the iPad, a tactile display device. You've done a podcast about it. I did.
00:01:05
S2: So what happened was when these people were actually over here, I did a podcast when they were down in Sydney with me having a look at the tactile graphics Braille display and 20 saw bar display all in one device. And what happened to me was that my phone went dead. But of course nobody realised because I had screen curtain on. So when they got back to South Korea last week, I did a number of follow up with Jessica Lee, who is their main marketing person for global relations, and we did another podcast which was a bit of an overview of the dot pad itself and where they're going to be at Sea Sung this week. So if you want to catch up with that about an eight minute in-depth look at the dot pad, then have a listen on my ESI podcast feed.
00:01:46
S1: Just very quickly, remind people what the dot pad is.
00:01:49
S2: This is the graphics display tablet, which is about the size of an iPad, but double the thickness and that displays either images from the Internet or from your computer or from drawings that you do on your iPad under the graphics display, including Braille labels. And then the 20 cell Braille display at the bottom of the device also works as a general refresher Braille display. So it's a pretty unique device. When you're on the home screens of your iOS device. It brings up the graphics for each icon on that graphics tactile display as well. So pretty unique device. As I mentioned the other week, it's currently only for commercial availability in South Korea. And I believe over the next several months or so, Dot Inc. is going to be looking for distributor ships around the world. Hence why Vision Australia is currently looking at the product from an evaluation testing point of view.
00:02:40
S1: And we may see it out in schools and libraries and other places in time. Indeed, staying with tactile display devices, tell us about the monarch.
00:02:51
S2: So this is a device from AP and Human Wear that was originally called the Dynamic Tactile Graphics Braille Display Device. AP is American Printing House for the Blind. And what its changed its name into. So it feels like a bit of a, you know, a life change. It's changed into a butterfly called the Monarch because it's like when you're reading the multi-line Braille display, it's like the butterfly technique, which I've personally never heard of before, about how you sort of use one finger to track to the end of the line and then your other finger when you're halfway across, you go back to the next line down and go backwards. So that's why they call it the sort of the butterfly technique. But anyway, so they had a 31 minute description of the monarch and its implications for education. And I just wish they were a little bit more descriptive about the actual device itself because they talk most of the time about and I guess it's quite serious, its implications for education because they're going to be developing this new sort of a daisy format. And Daisy really is a format where you can navigate by chapter, page, paragraph, headings, all that sort of cool stuff to get really through a a textbook properly and also to be able to access tactile graphics in the same book on the same tactile display. And what they said was this is squarely aimed at the education market because there's nothing worse than getting a Braille book followed by volumes of tactile Braille graphics, which I think I said in one textbook in particular, I think they said it cost about $30,000 worth of work to get it all done. And even then the book was getting getting to the student. Whereas if you can produce this e-book electronic Braille file, which contains not only the, you know, the text slash Braille, but also contains all the graphics, the tactile graphics, then you know, you're on a winner because it doesn't take that long to prepare as opposed to doing all the manual work. So again, it's like the dot pad with the tactile graphics display. It doesn't have a brow display. It's only if you like an electronic textbook reader for reading text textbooks. And again, as I said initially, it's really aimed at the education market. And we're looking for hopefully a sort of a big, big launch, hopefully in 2024. So at the moment they're really only talking about beta devices being with people as they put it through its paces. At the moment.
00:05:20
S1: A much loved champion of the accessibility community, Shelley Brisbane, appeared on a podcast recently.
00:05:28
S2: She did, and one of the main reasons I'm bringing this, besides the fact that Shelley Brisbane produces or this particular book called Excess for All, absolutely fantastic book is I always want to applaud podcasts that are mainstream in particular, and this is the one from the Twit network this week in Tech, and I just love it when mainstream podcasts spend time. In this case, it was the whole podcast talking to Shelley about the amazing accessibility features in the iPhone, etcetera. So, you know, I just wish this would happen a little bit more. I mean, I know people like Rene Ritchie and other people have done similar mainstream podcasts of their own about accessibility. But when these pop up every now and again, I just like to not only applaud the author in this case, Shelley, about her fantastic book and getting the word out, but the fact that it's being talked about on a mainstream podcast, so check it out. It was in the latest podcast last week, so have a look in there in your favorite pod catcher.
00:06:32
S1: Now there's a great little organization in Australia called the Access Technology Users Group who meet online. And you were a guest last week.
00:06:43
S2: I was. I went on to talk about the sensible air conditioning or AC device, which is the one that you link up to your split system air conditioner. So you control it. So rather than having to, you know, look at the remote control, you can access it via the sensible app on your iOS or Android device via the website or via your smart speaker of choice. But the other reason I wanted to remind people about the Access Technology Users group organised by Adam Morris is it's a great way of catching up with sort of main technology for assistive tech or other technology once a month and they have really great topics on when they've had a chat about the the sense player from hims already. I believe they may be looking at the new Victoria stream next time. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to put the contact details for the Access Technology Users group in the show notes. And if you want to, you know, be part of the whole process and subscribe to their mailing list and literally you only get told about when the next one is on, you're not going to get spammed or anything. It's a really great way of. Technology, of course, besides talking tech.
00:07:53
S1: Excellent. Now, I do want to take you back to the sensible device. We use it to control our aircon system. Very handy to tell it to switch on, change temperature, etcetera. Quite accessible. It's been around for a few years now.
00:08:08
S2: It's a really great device. I've had mine for, you know, 5 or 6 years as well, and mine actually broke for some odd reason. So I very, very quickly went out and bought another one.
00:08:17
S1: I should think so. Tell me about the active Braille display that they've been talking about on Apple Vis.
00:08:24
S2: Yeah, this was reviewed by Scott Davitt. This bright display was the active 40, so Braille display from a company overseas somewhere, which I don't think he actually really said in the article is that Apple views. But what caught my attention is I don't know if this is on other Braille displays, but it has this feature where when you get to the end of the brow line and I can't remember the exact technical term for it, but they must have a touch surface or a sensor that when your finger hits the end of the line, it automatically scrolls the beginning of the next line. So as soon as you bring your finger back to the beginning, you're ready to start reading the next line without having to be a manual person and press the the next panning button or the next longer button. So I thought that was quite interesting. Its feature set reminded me a little bit of the Bryant range. So for example, you had a clock app in there, an editor and a few other options, but I just thought, well, you know, it's interesting when these devices come out how they implement different things slightly differently. And the other thing that sort of reminded me about the Braille a little bit is apparently by default, it has iPhone compatibility mode, which will work with both Mac and iOS, of course. But then when you want to use it with Android or Windows, you've got to turn off the default iPhone mode. So I just wish sometimes these things weren't a bit fiddly as they are.
00:09:46
S1: Speaking of iPhones, Apple have released a yellow iPhone 14 and 14 plus.
00:09:52
S2: I know. And apparently it's not just yellow, it's yellow. So it's a very bright yellow color. It's funny because every time I think about a yellow, I think of a Volkswagen Beetle, but that's beside the point. It's a way of, I guess, Apple reminding people that, you know, the iPhone is still here. It's not a new iPhone, but it's an exciting new color. So if you want to stand out in the crowd, that's beside the fact that if you put a case on or not, then you can have a yellow iPhone. You don't get the yellow color in the iPhone pro or the pro max, because obviously people that are professionals don't need different colors. They just need standard personal colors. But, you know, if you've been hanging out for an iPhone 14 or 14 plus and you want a different color to stand out in the crowd, then the yellow one is currently available for you.
00:10:37
S1: Many more bands available for the Apple Watch.
00:10:41
S2: I know 20 different colored bands now available now. I think they're still the same band. So you've still got the the solo loop and the fluoro elastomer, otherwise called the rubber band loop and so on. But you just get them in different colors now. So in typical Apple fashion, you've got purple fog. I don't quite know what purple fog, but anyway, you've got purple fog, you've got midnight black and all these amazing words to describe these amazing colors that we just know is, you know, green, blue, red, black, etcetera, etcetera. But if you like me and, you know, you've only got 13 Apple Watch bands and you might want another couple more of different colors, particularly if you're low vision, then they are now available in the Apple store. And if you want to go into the Apple Store app, you can find both the yellow iPhone there for ordering and of course, the 20 Apple Watch bands.
00:11:37
S1: For some music lovers, Apple's classic music app will be available by the end of the month.
00:11:43
S2: Yeah, this has been talked about for a very long time. When I say a very long time, I'm pretty sure it's about two years now, which in technology terms is a very, very long time. So it's for people that want to focus purely on classical music. So your favorite composer or your favorite version of a particular classical music? And what I didn't say in the article is what sort of subscription that's going to cost you, because I'm assuming it's going to be like, you know, different types of Apple music that you can get your hands on that if you want sort of the premium one you probably have going to have to pay for it. So in us terms, it's available on March 28th. Now, they didn't say where it's going to be available worldwide, but here's hoping it's not just a March 28th release in the States. It's also available worldwide. So if you're a classical music lover, then this is your chance to get stuck into it.
00:12:36
S1: The big Access technology event season taking place this week.
00:12:42
S2: Indeed. So this is a sea song. So the California State University Technology Exhibition and Conference. So they have lots of workshops, the exhibition hall lots and lots of distributors. So I think over the next couple of weeks or so, we'll be getting news items coming out there as major manufacturers and developers and organizations make announcements. So stand by for the next couple of weeks.
00:13:03
S1: And tell us about the Microsoft Ability summit, which took place last week.
00:13:08
S2: So this was looking at sort of the higher level policy type stuff and some new exciting stuff coming out of Microsoft, like the new stuff to do if the thing I up with indoor navigation and. The new assistant accessibility assistant coming in and Microsoft. So it's sort of a very high level talk. It's quite interesting. The chief accessibility Officer did a really nice blog that I've got in the show notes covering what was talked about at the Ability conference. Like I said, it's a high ranging conference, but I just wish, Steve, that this stuff would trickle down to third party developers for, you know, smartphone apps and workplace apps, in particular applications to make them more accessible. That's what I want to see. You know, it's fine to talk about it, but let's see it in action. Mm hmm.
00:13:52
S1: 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.
00:13:58
S2: Indeed. So, as always, you can check out our show notes on my blog site, which is David would be a dot PODBEAN pad B and.
00:14:05
S1: David would be dot PODBEAN podbean.com. To write to the program, you.
00:14:12
S2: Can write to me at Vision Australia where I work, which is David Dot Woodbridge. How it sounds at Vision Australia.
00:14:17
S1: Org David Dot Woodbridge at Vision Australia. Org This has been talking tech with me has been Vision Australia's National Advisor on Access Technology, David Woodbridge. Take care. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.
