Full Transcript for When technology meets disability: Is AI good for disabled people and how has tech changed our disabled lives?

think I've always been interested in that sort of intersection between human activity and what machines can do. 00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:52.160 And I, you know, went through my teens, uh, got my radio amateur license, uh mucked about with computers. 00:04:52.160 --> 00:05:00.319 I had an Apple II Plus when they uh just after they came out in about 1980, I think, or 1981. 00:05:00.319 --> 00:05:09.439 Um it didn't do a great deal, but you know, I was happy to have it on my desk and show people that I could play ping pong or whatever it was. 00:05:09.439 --> 00:05:31.439 Um and I've always been interested in how technology assists people with disabilities because I think it makes a it can be a game changer for disabled people, for older people, for for a whole a whole group of people in society who would otherwise be excluded from certain experiences or activities. 00:05:31.439 --> 00:05:50.240 And I think although I don't come from Jamie's sort of eating code for breakfast tech background, I am much more, oh well, this is useful, I can make use of this, or this group of people could take advantage of that technology, and I I quite like to connect people together. 00:05:50.240 --> 00:06:10.319 And Jamie and I have recently sort of connected in the in the world of aviation because Jamie was flight simming one day um and managed to, I think he put it on Twitter, follow me on Twitch, and I followed Jamie flying a Spitfire, and and I just thought this is amazing. 00:06:10.319 --> 00:06:35.279 Um, and as a result of that, Jamie and I have shared this passion for aviation together, and Jamie's now an air ability scholar with the Air Ability Charity, and uh and I've just been invited to join the Board of Air Ability as a trustee, having previously been an ambassador and been around the country talking to various groups of people about the work that we do at Air Ability. 00:06:35.279 --> 00:06:38.319 But it's it there's a lot of tech involved in my life. 00:06:38.319 --> 00:06:47.360 Um, when people come and stay in my house, it's a nightmare because you have to say to them, look, I know there are light switches on the wall and stuff like that, but could you please not use them? 00:06:47.360 --> 00:06:51.680 If you want something done, tell me what time do you want the lights off? 00:06:51.680 --> 00:06:54.639 What time how what how what temperature do you want the house? 00:06:54.639 --> 00:06:57.759 Don't go around pushing buttons, you'll mess up my whole system. 00:06:58.079 --> 00:06:58.560 Thank you. 00:06:58.560 --> 00:07:02.160 Both of your intros are very thorough and and amazing. 00:07:02.160 --> 00:07:03.279 I mean, both of you. 00:07:03.279 --> 00:07:04.720 Uh, and I totally get that, Geoff. 00:07:04.720 --> 00:07:11.199 It's like when you go and stay at somebody else's house and we have to press buttons again or turn knobs, and you're like, this is really annoying. 00:07:11.199 --> 00:07:13.519 But okay, I wanted to wonder if we could focus a little bit. 00:07:13.519 --> 00:07:15.600 Maybe start with you, Geoff, and then to Jamie. 00:07:15.600 --> 00:07:26.720 Do you remember the first bit of tech that was directly impactful in terms of your disability, your neurodiversity, your impairment, that you went, okay, this is more than a gadget. 00:07:26.720 --> 00:07:28.800 This is something that really helps me with my life. 00:07:28.800 --> 00:07:31.439 I mean, Geoff, can you remember something like that? 00:07:31.759 --> 00:07:32.720 Yes, I can. 00:07:32.720 --> 00:07:47.279 Um, when I was 33, I had a I think it's called L5S1, the bit the the disc, the two discs at the sort of the base of top of your lumbar spine. 00:07:47.279 --> 00:07:48.959 I had a disc prolapse. 00:07:48.959 --> 00:08:08.560 And when I came back to work at the BBC having had 11 months of severe pain, followed by s you know, spinal surgery, followed by six months of um uh convalescence, I had to tell the BBC, actually, you know, guys, I'm disabled uh and I might need some adjustments. 00:08:08.560 --> 00:08:12.000 Before then, I was totally undeniable about my impairments. 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:21.600 Uh if people asked me, do I need something, I would just, you know, I would make them feel sorry that they bothered to ask, which was uh extremely not very nice of me. 00:08:21.600 --> 00:08:30.160 However, um uh when I came back, I was asked, oh look, you know, we've got this new product called Dragon, Dragon Dictate. 00:08:30.160 --> 00:08:32.159 Would you like to try it for us? 00:08:32.159 --> 00:09:00.639 And that, you know, although it wasn't perfect and it crashed a lot on the BBC's network and goodness knows what else, I could see the way that was heading, and I've been a huge, huge fan of uh voice to text in all of its various guises since then because it's just become more and more and more usable, and you spend less and less and less time uh correcting its silly mistakes. 00:09:01.039 --> 00:09:06.240 What's really funny is uh my first major piece of disability tech is actually the mirror image of Geoff's. 00:09:06.240 --> 00:09:08.960 Mine was uh text-to-speech. 00:09:08.960 --> 00:09:15.440 So through various parts of my life I've had not much not much verbal voice, not use my mouth words as we'd call it. 00:09:15.440 --> 00:09:24.960 And um during my teenage years, uh when I was homeless and then living in supported living, the environment was uh had a lot of barriers, and it's the it's ultimately the barriers that get in the way, right? 00:09:24.960 --> 00:09:28.879 And with all those barriers and everything else going on, I I basically stopped talking. 00:09:28.879 --> 00:09:31.519 Um, and words were no longer really working. 00:09:31.519 --> 00:09:34.159 Um, and that that was like a couple of years. 00:09:34.159 --> 00:09:40.639 Um and I used a little smartphone called a Nokia E61, which I would write text messages on and then show to people. 00:09:40.639 --> 00:09:53.279 Um, and that's how I started to

advocate for myself within that environment, because the whole point of that environment was to try and make the random Augy people they had easy to look after, not necessarily move us forward in our lives. 00:09:53.279 --> 00:10:12.639 Um, and then that in about 2008 or 2009 gave way to an iPhone 3G that had uh ProloQo for text and proloquo to go, which are two assistive uh augmentative communication tools, um, which which meant that I could meaningfully contribute to my own planning meetings and stuff like that. 00:10:12.639 --> 00:10:20.080 Um, and there was always this moment where people realized that I did actually have thoughts and I could think and do things. 00:10:20.080 --> 00:10:31.039 Now, the flip side of that is on the internet where nobody knew that I wasn't particularly verbal, where I was doing online forums and stuff, I was already getting work doing web development and software stuff. 00:10:31.039 --> 00:10:33.120 So there was these two completely different worlds. 00:10:33.120 --> 00:10:47.440 The one world that expected very little of me, saw a learning disability and an assumption that I couldn't do things, and then the online world where I could communicate freely and openly and fluidly, where people would then see what I could do rather than what I couldn't. 00:10:47.440 --> 00:10:50.399 So yeah, it's kind of interesting that it's the mirror image of Geoff. 00:10:50.399 --> 00:10:55.039 Geoff was about speech becoming text, mine was about text becoming speech. 00:10:55.039 --> 00:11:01.519 Um and specifically in a portable device that was affordable to me rather than a giant AAC system that would have been thousands. 00:11:01.919 --> 00:11:20.320 Well, you both I mean, thinking about Geoff, you with your dragon and and and Jamie with his software development and the clever stuff he was doing, did you both feel and I'll ask Jamie first, that you were kind of pioneers, you were breaking new ground, no one was doing what you were doing kind of stuff. 00:11:20.320 --> 00:11:25.200 Jamie, what do you were you the only one on the street doing it with your kind of condition, etc.? 00:11:25.840 --> 00:11:26.960 Uh not quite. 00:11:26.960 --> 00:11:29.120 So back in so there's two things. 00:11:29.120 --> 00:11:34.240 One thing I did build in 2007 or so, which felt very new at the time. 00:11:34.240 --> 00:11:40.559 Um at the time, the the network three gave you unlimited messages through something called MSN Messenger. 00:11:40.559 --> 00:11:43.039 Yeah, and I couldn't afford internet data. 00:11:43.039 --> 00:11:49.919 So I wrote a screen reader where I could ask Messenger to go and load a web page for me and return all the headlines and stuff. 00:11:49.919 --> 00:11:59.360 Um I basically built a very uh very, very early version of an Agentik tool in that I could tell it what I wanted and I'd use keywords and it would string it together and then do things for me. 00:11:59.360 --> 00:12:03.039 Um I didn't know anybody else in my life that was writing code to do that sort of thing. 00:12:03.039 --> 00:12:06.879 But when I got to the AAC stuff, it was very early days for the technology. 00:12:06.879 --> 00:12:12.320 The phone had only been out a couple of years, but it was clear that it was the way that that technology was going to go already. 00:12:12.320 --> 00:12:15.600 There was already specialisms in it, there was already custom apps and stuff. 00:12:15.600 --> 00:12:22.879 Um, I didn't end up needing to build my own software, uh, which funnily enough is the exact opposite of where I'm at now, which we can come on to later. 00:12:22.879 --> 00:12:30.240 Where the things I'm working on right now, I think, are the the closest to the cutting edge I've ever been for emerging technology. 00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:32.399 But that that's that's a chat for later. 00:12:32.799 --> 00:12:37.120 I'm gonna occasionally do this just for our less techie uh listener. 00:12:37.120 --> 00:12:41.759 So AAC augmentative and alternative communication, is that right? 00:12:41.759 --> 00:12:42.639 That's the one, yeah. 00:12:43.279 --> 00:12:52.320 So essentially I can type a message on my phone and hold it up so it's really big screen, or I can press a button and it voices it in a voice that doesn't sound totally not like me. 00:12:52.320 --> 00:12:54.000 But it's an approximation. 00:12:54.159 --> 00:12:57.440 Um So what about you, Geoff, and your dragon experience? 00:12:57.440 --> 00:12:59.279 Were you the only kid on the block? 00:12:59.279 --> 00:13:06.559 I mean, they asked you to try it, but I mean, what other you you have a severe sight impairment, you have shortened arms. 00:13:06.559 --> 00:13:11.519 So I love the idea that you nobody noticed you were disabled kind of thing. 00:13:11.600 --> 00:13:13.679 But it was just me that didn't notice, Phil. 00:13:13.679 --> 00:13:13.919 Yes. 00:13:13.919 --> 00:13:15.360 Everybody else knew already. 00:13:15.360 --> 00:13:16.799 Yes. 00:13:17.120 --> 00:13:21.679 Was it more a sense of um you didn't have what I would refer to as a disabled identity? 00:13:21.679 --> 00:13:22.159 Yeah. 00:13:23.440 --> 00:13:26.720 I didn't self-identify as disabled, and I would uh I would say that's what I've done. 00:13:26.720 --> 00:13:29.600 So Dragon, I mean Dragon dare to say I was. 00:13:30.159 --> 00:13:33.840 Dragon played a vital part for you and became even more important. 00:13:33.840 --> 00:13:38.080 But how did you see yourself in relation to technology as a result of that? 00:13:38.080 --> 00:13:40.480 Were you the only one doing it or or whatever? 00:13:40.720 --> 00:13:53.519 You know, I was listening to somebody on a podcast years ago; I think it was a sight-impaired podcast about technology, and this person- I can't even remember who it was now, so sorry I can't credit you, whoever you are. 00:13:53.519 --> 00:14:03.600 Um, but they said, uh, you know, as uh as a visually impaired user of tech, you have to be uh a sort of super user.

00:14:03.600 --> 00:14:15.120 You you you you've gotta get your hands dirty, you've gotta, you know, pop the bonnet and tweak around under under the bonnet and and and adjust things because otherwise it will never work for you. 00:14:15.120 --> 00:14:36.720 Um and I think uh I don't know whether that's the same experience that Jamie's had, but I think uh a lot of us have had to inform ourselves about these things in order to um make things work as they should do, in a way that non-disabled people just carry on la la la la la and and not worry about quite so much. 00:14:36.720 --> 00:14:41.039 So, you know, we uh we are we are master problem solvers, all of us, I think. 00:14:41.279 --> 00:14:41.440 Yeah. 00:14:41.919 --> 00:14:43.759 So you're taking it to a different level. 00:14:43.759 --> 00:14:47.759 Most people I'm I'm I would say in the sight impairment area, I'm not sight impaired. 00:14:47.759 --> 00:14:56.159 So I use very, very fewer facilities on an iPhone that a blind person or a partially sighted person would take to the ultimate. 00:14:56.159 --> 00:14:57.360 Yeah, I I get that. 00:14:57.360 --> 00:14:58.399 I think that's very true. 00:14:58.399 --> 00:15:00.159 Sorry, Jamie, you were gonna add something. 00:15:00.480 --> 00:15:13.200 I was gonna say that one of the things that I've ended up building a lot of my work around is this idea that the barriers that exist inside the things that we make and the barriers are the things that prevent, limit, and block us, they tend to come from bad assumptions. 00:15:13.200 --> 00:15:19.120 So when I was back at the BBC, we you know, we had all sudden issues where we had lots of colour contrast issues and font size issues. 00:15:19.120 --> 00:15:22.559 Our regulations hadn't changed, our rules hadn't changed, our training hadn't changed. 00:15:22.559 --> 00:15:25.840 I sort of wandered down to the design team and said, Hi, how is it? 00:15:25.840 --> 00:15:29.679 And someone went, Oh, Jamie, we've got a bunch of new design interns, you should go meet them. 00:15:29.679 --> 00:15:31.679 And I was like, ooh, that's interesting. 00:15:31.679 --> 00:15:38.720 So I went and met these young 20-somethings, and their only crime was they'd made the assumption that if they could see it, everybody could see it. 00:15:38.720 --> 00:15:43.200 So their assumption got baked into what was being built in the form of a barrier. 00:15:43.200 --> 00:15:49.440 And what happens with a lot of tech is the the assumptions are only based around the most common case, the non-disabled case. 00:15:49.440 --> 00:15:53.360 So the assumptions end up being being baked in and then excluding people. 00:15:53.360 --> 00:16:01.360 So an awful lot of the work that I do is just basically helping people make better assumptions, better knowledge about what people need, so that they don't exclude people from what they build. 00:16:01.679 --> 00:16:05.519 You kind of beautifully loaded into the the next question, uh Jamie. 00:16:05.519 --> 00:16:10.399 And you know, accessible tech used to mean specialist kit for disabled people. 00:16:10.399 --> 00:16:11.679 It was a bolt on an add-on. 00:16:11.679 --> 00:16:18.000 And we know now they have got better the designers, and there's stuff that is built into the phone, the watch, or the computer. 00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:19.600 Um this is a loaded question. 00:16:19.600 --> 00:16:21.360 We'll come to Jamie and then to Geoff. 00:16:21.360 --> 00:16:27.039 In terms of this mainstreaming of access tools, is it an unqualified success? 00:16:27.039 --> 00:16:30.879 A is this great, or where are the areas we still need to do something? 00:16:35.120 --> 00:16:36.639 I think we're on a good path. 00:16:37.039 --> 00:16:40.639 Um, I think maintaining the current path of the Trump in government is quite difficult. 00:16:40.639 --> 00:16:51.600 Like we're already seeing the um DAE accessibility teams are getting sliced to all of the major tech companies, um, and that is already having negative effects on things. 00:16:51.600 --> 00:16:57.840 Um the slaughtering of section 508 legislation in the US has a knock-on chain to the whole supply chain. 00:16:57.840 --> 00:17:02.240 So if if the US companies don't need to do it for the government, they stop bothering to do it for everybody. 00:17:02.240 --> 00:17:05.440 So as a threat, that's kind of a really big one. 00:17:05.440 --> 00:17:08.480 I think we're in a position where all the foundations are good. 00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:23.279 So if we look at all of our core platforms, um so macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, all of them have really good accessibility fundamentals built in at the platform level, really, really, really tightly, tightly in. 00:17:23.279 --> 00:17:27.279 Um, it's just making sure that everything we build on top of it exposes them. 00:17:27.279 --> 00:17:36.640 And weirdly, one of the reasons why I'm quite interested in like agentic development stuff, especially on Apple platforms, is it it uses the accessibility tools to do it. 00:17:36.640 --> 00:17:43.440 So funnily enough, all the things we've been building for accessibility is exactly the tools that Agentic AI are using to use things. 00:17:43.440 --> 00:17:53.039 Um so when you're building tools using the vibe coding like Apple tools, they come out really accessible because that's what the AI was using to do it in the first place. 00:17:53.039 --> 00:18:03.279 So I think we're we're the right now is difficult because right now accessibility is still seen as a bolt-on for most people who are making things. 00:18:03.279 --> 00:18:05.519 Um if they didn't, I wouldn't have a job. 00:18:05.519 --> 00:18:17.839 Um but going forward, as as more and more software becomes made by people who use it, um, and more and more of it becomes bespoke and and made on demand as you need it, um, I think accessibility is actually going to get a lot easier. 00:18:17.839 --> 00:18:20.319 Um but I can I can monologue about that later.

00:18:20.640 --> 00:18:22.160 Just one little bit before we come to Geoff. 00:18:22.160 --> 00:18:27.680 Uh that 508, is that's the is that the guidelines about accessibility set and it's sort of like a legal requirement? 00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:28.079 Yes. 00:18:28.640 --> 00:18:33.119 Section 508 is the purchasing guidelines for the US government when buying software. 00:18:33.119 --> 00:18:39.119 So if you want to sell to the US government, you must be Section 508 compliant, which is all it all their accessibility requirements. 00:18:39.519 --> 00:18:47.200 I remember speaking to a quite senior tech guy and they said we can still get access in via that, but all as you say, the maybe the other bits were harder now. 00:18:47.200 --> 00:18:49.119 Um that's a really good point. 00:18:49.119 --> 00:18:57.759 Um okay, Geoff, what in terms of mainstreaming accessibility success or areas where you still think there's gaps? 00:18:58.559 --> 00:19:06.720 Yeah, I think um the look, back in the day, accessibility products came with a very, very high price tag. 00:19:06.720 --> 00:19:16.400 I mean, your Pro LoQo to go uh Jamie probably cost about I think each iteration of that app was about two thousand pounds or something, wasn't it? 00:19:16.400 --> 00:19:22.480 It was something no longer for an app, wasn't it? 00:19:22.720 --> 00:19:28.480 Yeah, but it's a lot less than the four or five thousand pounds that one of the Tobovox systems would cost. 00:19:28.880 --> 00:19:56.319 Yes, and I I mean so what I want to say is I think developing one-off solutions for a group of people, uh, because of the because you can't scale it up into the hundreds of thousands or millions or tens of millions in terms of each unit that you're shipping, it's always going to be more expensive, especially if you include the the dev costs as part of the retail price of of the product or service that you're selling. 00:19:56.319 --> 00:20:02.799 Having it built in, I think, has really been a massive game changer for me. 00:20:02.799 --> 00:20:28.000 However, I would just say when Apple decided to build in effectively Dragon into its into iOS and Mac OS, I think they sort of lost the plot of it, and I I I lost patience because I found that it wasn't as as helpful and it wasn't as usable, and it kept making the same mistakes over and over and over. 00:20:28.000 --> 00:20:30.960 And it's only recently, thanks to Mr. 00:20:30.960 --> 00:20:44.799 Friend over there, um, that I picked up a different dictation tool, a different speech to text tool called Whisperflow, which I've now been using, I think for it always tells me every day how long I've been using it. 00:20:44.799 --> 00:20:55.119 I think I've been using it for two months, and it's been a it's it's been a a massive productivity changer because I don't I can tell it things and it just writes them. 00:20:55.119 --> 00:21:00.000 It doesn't misspell things or mishear things, it it just it just works. 00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:02.640 As

it Steve Jobs would like to say. 00:21:03.599 --> 00:21:10.319 I think there's a couple of issues for me out of this that I'd I'd really be interested in both your views on. 00:21:10.319 --> 00:21:15.119 The f the first one is a very technical one, I guess, and it's probably more Jamie's bag. 00:21:15.119 --> 00:21:23.759 But you know, as we move into individualized solutions, as things develop that are personal to you, you set your phone up in such a way it only works for you, kind of stuff. 00:21:23.759 --> 00:21:34.319 And Jamie, you're writing codes, you're talking about agents and all that stuff, and open AI and Claude and all the stuff that's so exciting that's all going to kill us, of course, by the time we're whatever age. 00:21:34.319 --> 00:21:36.160 Anyway, that's the first thing. 00:21:36.160 --> 00:21:42.160 How do you make solutions that are individualized acceptable to corporations? 00:21:42.160 --> 00:21:52.960 Because I can recall back in the day when JORS was a fledgling and blind people were saying this is brilliant, Lloyd's Bank and all the banks were saying, No, no, no, no, we can't have that. 00:21:52.960 --> 00:21:54.480 Our systems will fall apart. 00:21:54.480 --> 00:21:59.519 So it had to be tested to destruction, and of course, their systems didn't fall apart, so then they bought it. 00:21:59.519 --> 00:22:04.799 We're at that stage now, it seems to me, with agents and all sorts of other things. 00:22:04.799 --> 00:22:09.920 And the other question, which may be more Geoff, is the cost of stuff. 00:22:09.920 --> 00:22:12.480 I mean, phones are incredibly expensive. 00:22:12.480 --> 00:22:22.079 They are brilliant at what they do, but there is now, it seems to me, an underclass that just cannot afford this technology and will never be able to access it unless we do something about the cost. 00:22:22.079 --> 00:22:31.200 Starting first, then with the how do we get this mainstreaming, these individualized solutions without crashing the whole of the internet or frightening people to death. 00:22:31.359 --> 00:22:33.119 Jamie, what do you what's your take? 00:22:33.119 --> 00:22:38.319 So I'll give a little provider first of what I'm doing, because what I'm doing is a little bit weird. 00:22:38.319 --> 00:22:42.400 Um, I'm not using Claude Code or OpenAI or Gemini or anything like that. 00:22:42.400 --> 00:22:43.200 I don't trust them. 00:22:43.200 --> 00:22:44.799 They're not good ideas. 00:22:44.799 --> 00:22:47.759 Um I don't send all my data to them, etc. 00:22:48.160 --> 00:22:50.480 What I have Can I be really cheeky, Jamie? 00:22:50.480 --> 00:22:53.680 Your your mistrust is you just you're giving too much to them. 00:22:53.759 --> 00:22:56.480 What is the organise the organisations are really dodgy. 00:22:56.480 --> 00:22:57.519 I don't trust them. 00:22:57.519 --> 00:23:00.799 Especially uh Sam Altman and OpenAI. 00:23:00.799 --> 00:23:05.200 They are actively scary organizations with scary agendas. 00:23:05.200 -->

00:23:11.359 Um so what I've been doing is I've been doing everything locally, and that's where the last year has really changed for me. 00:23:11.359 --> 00:23:15.519 So down there is is my gaming PC that I use for flight sim stuff. 00:23:15.519 --> 00:23:17.759 Um that's what it was built for. 00:23:17.759 --> 00:23:20.880 Um but these days it does a whole bunch of other stuff for me. 00:23:20.880 --> 00:23:25.200 It's it's my it's the place where I host the model that I use to do the GenTech stuff. 00:23:25.200 --> 00:23:34.559 So to give some examples of what I'm using it for, from like the most simple to the the most complicated, and then I can explain kind of how these fit into the blue picture. 00:23:34.559 --> 00:23:44.160 So on the most simple side is things like um I was doing some work for Lego where we were moving a whole bunch of content and we had to generate alt text for hundreds of images. 00:23:44.160 --> 00:23:55.039 AI produces terrible alt text, so we weren't going to use AI to generate the alt text, but in less than an hour I could build a custom user interface on my Mac that was perfect for that one task. 00:23:55.039 --> 00:24:06.000 It showed me the image where it was on the page, let me type in the alt text, and when I finished, it formatted it in the exact file format needed to upload to the content management system where it needed to go. 00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:09.119 That tool was exactly accessible to me. 00:24:09.119 --> 00:24:15.279 It had the only the accessibility features that I personally needed around voiceover, size, keyboard controls. 00:24:15.279 --> 00:24:20.400 That entire user interface was just created on demand as I needed it by my own computer. 00:24:20.400 --> 00:24:25.359 It wasn't there's not one there's not one system that was sent to everybody. 00:24:25.359 --> 00:24:33.279 There's one set of data and set of parameters that's set to everybody, and then your own computer generates the interface exactly as you need it. 00:24:33.279 --> 00:24:37.200 So that's kind of how I see that that kind of aspect of it going. 00:24:37.200 --> 00:24:42.720 Um we move away from standardized interfaces where one interface for everybody. 00:24:42.720 --> 00:24:48.319 Um have you ever come across like the difference between uh universal design and inclusive design? 00:24:48.480 --> 00:24:50.880 So I certainly know the discussion, yeah. 00:24:51.119 --> 00:24:58.880 So the basic idea is with with inclusive design, um, you're basically trying to meet as many needs as possible, but you might have separate solutions. 00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:02.640 So for example, at the BBC we had news round and we had BBC News. 00:25:02.640 --> 00:25:04.160 There were different audiences. 00:25:04.160 --> 00:25:09.599 It's inclusive design because there wasn't one news website that could actually do justice to both. 00:25:09.599 --> 00:25:13.759 Those two communities had different enough sets of needs, they actually needed different tools. 00:25:13.759 --> 00:25:19.680 And if you did try and make a news-ish, round-ish, you wouldn't serve anybody, right? 00:25:19.680 --> 00:25:23.839 So inclusive design is about having multiple solutions to the same problem. 00:25:23.839 --> 00:25:29.680 Universal design is about having one solution that meets as many needs as possible, for as many people as possible. 00:25:29.680 --> 00:25:31.359 So for example, the British Library. 00:25:31.359 --> 00:25:36.480 We're only going to build one British library, so we're gonna build it as accessible as we can, right? 00:25:36.480 --> 00:25:42.960 Right now for software, even when we're trying to do inclusive design, within the things that we build, we tend to be quite universal about it. 00:25:42.960 --> 00:25:48.559 We're building one user interface, one base system, maybe with some adjustments, maybe with support for end user things. 00:25:48.559 --> 00:25:53.680 We're not at the stage for most things where we can just build a custom thing from the ground up as needed. 00:25:53.680 --> 00:25:57.200 That's the world that I'm now living in with the tools that I've got available to me. 00:25:57.200 --> 00:26:00.559 I don't really use standard interfaces for anything anymore. 00:26:00.559 --> 00:26:06.079 I've got my own system that can just build what I need when I need it, um, which is kind of crazy. 00:26:06.079 --> 00:26:07.279 So that's that's that. 00:26:07.680 --> 00:26:16.640 But when you when you talk about again, Simon's prompt earlier, people listening to us may know a fair bit, but may not quite be familiar with terms like interfaces. 00:26:16.640 --> 00:26:21.680 Are you talking about Windows and Apple and iOS and those are the things that are interface? 00:26:22.559 --> 00:26:28.000 I mean websites, um, an interface is anything that you put you you put data in and out of. 00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:32.640 So it could be a web page, it could be an app, it could be a desktop app or a phone app. 00:26:32.880 --> 00:26:34.480 Um there's everything. 00:26:34.480 --> 00:26:37.200 Sorry, Jamie, I was gonna say, but there's a variation in your answer. 00:26:37.200 --> 00:26:40.960 And the the example you gave for Lego, which is great, but this is my ignorance. 00:26:40.960 --> 00:26:42.480 That sounds like a program to me. 00:26:42.480 --> 00:26:44.240 That doesn't sound like using AI. 00:26:44.240 --> 00:26:50.480 Are you are you're not going out to the big AI world, you're just having something that's enclosed in your own wall space because you think. 00:26:50.720 --> 00:26:58.000 Yeah, but but the the local AI model created that as a custom app from scratch for me for in one hour. 00:26:58.000 --> 00:27:01.119 Yeah, it would have been like two or three months of work to build that app. 00:27:01.119 --> 00:27:04.640 And because it because it was made so quickly, I just threw it away afterwards. 00:27:04.640 --> 00:27:07.359 Because if I regenerate it again, it'll do a better job next time.

00:27:07.599 --> 00:27:08.880 So you're running, aren't you? 00:27:08.880 --> 00:27:15.119 You've got keeping this really simple for me mainly, um, you've got a massive computer in quotes. 00:27:15.119 --> 00:27:21.680 I don't mean in terms of size, but I mean in capacity, and that is your LLM, your large language model. 00:27:22.240 --> 00:27:24.480 It runs it runs several LLM models, yeah. 00:27:24.480 --> 00:27:24.799 Right. 00:27:24.799 --> 00:27:27.200 And then I talk to it using Yep, I own it. 00:27:27.440 --> 00:27:29.680 It doesn't get it doesn't go on the internet and search for anything. 00:27:29.680 --> 00:27:30.480 Right, I've got you. 00:27:30.880 --> 00:27:32.000 It can do if I want it to. 00:27:32.000 --> 00:27:35.519 So if I want to tell it to go and get the BBC News headlines for me, it will. 00:27:35.759 --> 00:27:36.160 It would do that. 00:27:36.160 --> 00:27:39.759 And your original question, Phil, was about how do you apply this for corporations. 00:27:39.759 --> 00:27:41.759 Is that what it's yes? 00:27:41.759 --> 00:27:46.880 Is there a way you can work with corporations, Jamie, to allow that individuality? 00:27:47.200 --> 00:27:48.079 Yeah, I think so. 00:27:48.079 --> 00:27:56.000 Because it's happening on the end user's device, meaning it's controllable by the uh MDM, so mobile device management tools. 00:27:56.000 --> 00:28:01.119 Um so one of the reasons I'm able to talk about this is we I I build a financial product, right? 00:28:01.119 --> 00:28:02.880 I build a thing that detects financial crime. 00:28:02.880 --> 00:28:05.200 It's one of the reasons I can't use hosted AI. 00:28:05.200 --> 00:28:07.359 It's why everything has to be local. 00:28:07.359 --> 00:28:13.599 I can use so so I'm using uh these tools to build and do my work every day. 00:28:13.599 --> 00:28:20.559 Um and I've got a great disability kind of angle on that in a moment, to progress that product and build it and do all my other work. 00:28:20.559 --> 00:28:30.079 Um when I first had my injury five years ago and I found myself lying flat 20 odd hours a day, I could maybe do 10% of what I could do sat at a desk. 00:28:30.079 --> 00:28:43.839 These days, through a system called Hermes and Agentic Development Tools and all the rest of it, I'm up to being able to do about 80% of my life lying flat just from my phone, just using the the hosted models and the tools that are inside my house. 00:28:43.839 --> 00:28:46.799 Um it all runs off, well, it doesn't all run off the solar. 00:28:46.799 --> 00:28:51.119 Sometimes it goes over more than what the solar can do, but most of it runs off the solar on the shed. 00:28:51.119 --> 00:28:53.920 So I'm not even dependent on the electricity grid. 00:28:53.920 --> 00:28:59.920 And these these tools are getting better and better and better, and they're open source and free. 00:28:59.920 --> 00:29:03.599 Um, they're the complete opposite of the commercial giant hosted tools. 00:29:03.599 --> 00:29:13.119 The way

I say it is sometimes a bit like computing in the 70s was all IBM and mainframes, and you you you hired all of your computing, and then desktop computers came along, and everyone went, Why would I do that? 00:29:13.119 --> 00:29:15.039 Why would I hire it when I have it on my desk? 00:29:15.039 --> 00:29:17.599 I think we're going through exact same transition for AI. 00:29:17.599 --> 00:29:22.480 We'll get these really big, clever hosted AI systems, and maybe you'll go use it for something really complicated. 00:29:22.480 --> 00:29:25.519 But most of your day-to-day work you'll just do on the local system. 00:29:25.519 --> 00:29:32.319 Um I happen to have good enough hardware available to do that now, but give it a few years and it will catch up. 00:29:32.720 --> 00:29:40.559 Okay, so Geoff, a long time ago I sort of raised the issue of cost, expense, that kind of thing. 00:29:40.559 --> 00:29:44.720 You know, you've been you you you in our group, we know Geoff very well. 00:29:44.720 --> 00:29:49.440 We talk to Geoff a lot, and me and Simon certainly, and I know Jamie and Geoff talk to each other. 00:29:49.440 --> 00:30:01.440 So we know we tease Geoff uh quite frequently, Simon and I, where he's leapt into his car, bought the latest iPhone the minute the stores opened, and uh is the first kind of early adopter type guy. 00:30:01.440 --> 00:30:10.640 But what's your sense of the commercial realities of accessibility, Geoff, for disabled people in terms of the the expense and so on? 00:30:10.640 --> 00:30:14.160 Because Jamie's doing something pretty unique, isn't he, individually? 00:30:14.160 --> 00:30:17.440 But we're all buying iPhones and stuff like that. 00:30:17.839 --> 00:30:22.160 Yeah, I think I mean, look, the tech is expensive. 00:30:22.160 --> 00:30:23.759 There's no two ways about that. 00:30:23.759 --> 00:30:27.039 I'm I'm I'm better now, Phil. 00:30:27.039 --> 00:30:32.480 I'm I'm in recovery from my uh I'm in recovery from my overspending addiction. 00:30:32.480 --> 00:30:45.519 Um and I'm I I now have uh an iPhone uh on my desk here that's two generations out of date, which you know, back in the day I could never have I could never have lived with that. 00:30:45.519 --> 00:30:52.160 And I'm now wondering whether I should upgrade to the you know to the latest iPhone model. 00:30:52.160 --> 00:31:15.519 But I think th there will unfortunately a lot of these tools do cost serious amounts of money, and there will always be people who either for financial reasons which and we know that there's an intersection between poverty and living with long-term impairments and and health conditions. 00:31:15.519 --> 00:31:34.079 So, you know, there there are people who for economic reasons don't have access to the same cutting-edge stuff, and there are other people who just think, well, why should I spend £2,000 on a new phone when I can just go down the road and buy one for £150? 00:31:34.319 --> 00:31:48.319 So the thing that I've been thinking along with this is the Apple stuff has been embedded so long now that you can actually go and buy a four or five year old phone and it's gonna run voiceover and it's gonna run all the core accessibility stuff just as well. 00:31:48.319 --> 00:31:54.000 The the latest iteration of AI stuff, that's where you start having to spend pretty decent money. 00:31:54.000 --> 00:32:08.559 I'm the same as you, I'm running like a three and a half, three generation old iPhone because the new ones don't offer me anything useful, but the every time we we change the computers we're running the AI stuff on, it gets faster and more progressive and more capable. 00:32:08.559 --> 00:32:11.599 Now, for me as a business, that's quite easy to do. 00:32:11.599 --> 00:32:12.960 I'm a single developer. 00:32:12.960 --> 00:32:26.400 If I can put you know, we put almost 10 grand into one of our machines, which is a vast amount, but as a business, that's 10 grand to quadruple the amount that I was getting done, so it was worth it, not as an individual. 00:32:26.400 --> 00:32:31.359 So I think for the the the baseline of accessibility always goes up. 00:32:31.359 --> 00:32:34.240 So I always I always think about what can you get for £150. 00:32:34.240 --> 00:32:37.359 That's always been like quite a nice inflection point. 00:32:37.359 --> 00:32:41.920 At the moment, that's your iPhone 13's iPhone 13, no iPhone 14 secondhand. 00:32:41.920 --> 00:32:47.039 That's a that's a very, very capable device, or or an iPad that's about two or three years old. 00:32:47.039 --> 00:32:50.240 Um it's not going to be able to do local AI stuff. 00:32:50.240 --> 00:32:51.680 It's not got the imp for that. 00:32:51.680 --> 00:32:54.799 But then most desktops and laptops and stuff won't right now. 00:32:54.799 --> 00:33:06.079 Um but if we give it, I think if we give it a couple of years, the what you can do with a model that runs on an ever slower computer is going up a lot faster than the better models are progressing. 00:33:06.079 --> 00:33:09.599 You know, so I've I've got a a Mac Mini here. 00:33:09.599 --> 00:33:12.079 That wasn't useful for AI six months ago. 00:33:12.079 --> 00:33:13.119 It was too slow. 00:33:13.119 --> 00:33:16.319 Now it's capable of all sorts of things that it couldn't do. 00:33:16.319 --> 00:33:19.599 So as time goes on, the amount you need is going down. 00:33:19.759 --> 00:33:20.799 And that's a really good point. 00:33:20.799 --> 00:33:33.279 If we say it's not about the latest landing of the the new tech, it's if a year or two, and you're right, we keep things longer, and that based on you've you've led us into something, and this is slightly indulgent, and it could be controversial. 00:33:33.279 --> 00:33:40.319 Jamie, you're new to this in the sense of um uh Phil often says Apple's lost it. 00:33:40.319 --> 00:33:44.000 They uh there's nothing been exciting anymore. 00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:48.480 Uh me, me and Geoff were in the cult and we love it and

enjoy it. 00:33:48.480 --> 00:33:56.000 Phil is too, but he's saying, you know, there's no innovation, um, and it's a bit more incremental now and expensive, which does lead to what you said. 00:33:56.000 --> 00:33:59.279 You know, you can buy a four-year-old phone and it's still really, really good. 00:33:59.279 --> 00:34:03.920 So to the to the both of you, maybe we'll come to uh you first, Geoff, and then Jamie. 00:34:03.920 --> 00:34:07.680 Has Apple lagged behind? 00:34:07.680 --> 00:34:10.719 Is technology a bit dull now and just incremental? 00:34:11.599 --> 00:34:14.159 I think um two things about this. 00:34:14.159 --> 00:34:30.719 Firstly, you I don't think each time you release a new iPhone or uh tablet or Mac or uh software platform iOS or Mac OS, I don't think people want a complete revolution. 00:34:30.719 --> 00:34:34.559 Like it looks nothing like what they were doing or using before. 00:34:34.559 --> 00:34:50.239 Do you remember how Facebook would ever so often do a bit of a redesign and then there'd be a petition saying, sign below if you want to bring back the old Facebook interface, and then three months later nobody could remember what the old interface looked like anyway. 00:34:50.239 --> 00:34:55.440 But I don't think people want that kind of jolt out of their comfort zone. 00:34:55.440 --> 00:35:13.039 I think they want to be led gradually down this lovely carpeted corridor to uh, you know, a slightly newer, slightly more plush, a slightly better climate-controlled environment, not a complete scorched earth and let's build it from the ground upwards. 00:35:13.039 --> 00:35:17.679 So I think iteration is bound to be part of how that works. 00:35:17.679 --> 00:35:26.159 But I think also uh I feel like I'm uh talking out of the back of my head because I think Jamie knows this stuff a lot better than me. 00:35:27.039 --> 00:35:36.320 I think one thing I would say, uh just again, Geoff, and you've heard me say it to you before, but I'd I'd welcome your comment about the complexity of it. 00:35:36.320 --> 00:35:42.480 Now, in one sense, Jamie is driving the technology to the nth degree. 00:35:42.480 --> 00:35:47.280 He pushes things till they break, and then he knows what the boundary is and he can deal with that. 00:35:47.280 --> 00:35:49.519 You and I and Simon, Geoff. 00:35:49.519 --> 00:35:52.079 Um, I mean, you're the master at iOS. 00:35:52.079 --> 00:35:57.360 I mean, I I'm in awe of your experience because you do things with your phone that I don't even begin to think about. 00:35:57.360 --> 00:36:07.679 And in some ways, what I feel about Apple is they've become very bloated, that the product is now so full of bits and software in it that most people haven't a clue. 00:36:07.679 --> 00:36:15.360 It's there for the Jamie and you, but for the ordinary purchaser, they probably only use one-tenth of the phone's capability. 00:36:15.360 --> 00:36:16.239 I suppose that's what it's like. 00:36:16.239 --> 00:36:17.280 Why is that a bloat? 00:36:17.280 --> 00:36:21.440 Well, I think it's if it's only using the bits you're using, why is it a problem? 00:36:21.440 --> 00:36:27.360 I think it's probably because I feel it's adding complexity that doesn't need to be there. 00:36:27.360 --> 00:36:33.679 You know, they they in some ways they revise something, thinking it's an improvement, but actually it might not be an improvement. 00:36:33.760 --> 00:36:35.760 Just Can you give me a concrete example of it? 00:36:35.760 --> 00:36:36.800 Oh god, I know you'd do this. 00:36:36.800 --> 00:36:38.400 One of my favourite can. 00:36:38.400 --> 00:36:46.159 It's one of my favourite things about how Apple do it, which is Apple won't innovate unless they've actually got something they think is worth doing. 00:36:46.159 --> 00:36:51.840 So the iPhone Duo, for example, the software to make that happen has been going for about five years. 00:36:51.840 --> 00:36:59.039 They've been introducing flexible displa flexible resizing and Windows within Windows and bringing the entire dev community along with it. 00:36:59.039 --> 00:37:03.039 We sort of all knew this was going to happen eventually, but they had to lay the foundations for it. 00:37:03.039 --> 00:37:04.559 They slowly increment it. 00:37:04.559 --> 00:37:06.480 They didn't rush something out in a hurry. 00:37:06.480 --> 00:37:10.639 The other thing that Apple are generally quite good at is this progressive disclosure trick. 00:37:10.639 --> 00:37:16.880 So the core when you sign up a new iPhone is it takes you down a very narrow path of lots of ways off. 00:37:16.880 --> 00:37:21.360 So if you tell it how I have a vision impairment, it'll take you through all of those settings and stuff. 00:37:21.360 --> 00:37:31.199 So whilst it is there, it's a bit like there's a massive library and I don't take out every book, but the size of the library is really important because it means it's useful to a great number of people. 00:37:31.199 --> 00:37:39.679 I'm not inconvenienced I guess I'm inconvenienced by the fact that some of the shelves are longer than I'd like, but the f the trade-off is they're there for people who aren't me. 00:37:39.679 --> 00:37:45.119 So I think I think Apple actually did quite a good job of that in the in the grand scheme of things. 00:37:45.119 --> 00:37:48.480 But sometimes there is complexity that we just can't hide. 00:37:48.480 --> 00:37:55.840 Like we want technology to be as simple as possible, but it is also possible to make technology so simple that it becomes actually harder to use. 00:37:55.840 --> 00:38:10.719 We weirdly enough, we used to actually find this with the BBC stuff all the time, where we would simplify, simplify, simplify, simplify to the point where people couldn't actually use what we'd done because we simplified it for like two uses, and they were use number three and they couldn't find it. 00:38:10.880 --> 00:38:11.039 Right? 00:38:11.360 --> 00:38:12.480 I get your point, Jamie.

00:38:12.480 --> 00:38:13.599 Point is well made. 00:38:13.599 --> 00:38:22.079 I suppose the thing that I always harp back to when I find myself in a corner desperately trying to defend my position is the old one of Windows. 00:38:22.079 --> 00:38:27.360 When I remember Windows, you had to turn the stop button on to start it or vital. 00:38:27.360 --> 00:38:29.280 Yeah, you press the start button to shut it down. 00:38:29.280 --> 00:38:30.320 You know what I mean? 00:38:30.320 --> 00:38:35.840 Now that to me is balmy, and I kind of I remember that as an example. 00:38:35.840 --> 00:38:48.559 But to be fair, of course, when we talked in this forum, we're talking to people who are using uh iPhones and other gadgets, but also accessories and software and so on. 00:38:48.559 --> 00:38:51.440 J Geoff mentioned his house, for example. 00:38:51.440 --> 00:38:54.559 We know that he's using the A-Lady to do all of that stuff. 00:38:54.559 --> 00:39:01.599 Um The cost, I suppose, is the question as well as the bloat for the ordinary user. 00:39:01.599 --> 00:39:08.800 They're having to pay a high price for something that may be but your point to be fair, Jamie, was that you can buy second hand and you know three generations. 00:39:09.760 --> 00:39:14.639 There's also a great quote from Tim Cook, which is he doesn't care about the ROI for accessibility. 00:39:14.639 --> 00:39:20.639 There isn't a cost or bloat to having accessibility in a product, even if you're not personally using it. 00:39:20.639 --> 00:39:22.079 I don't I don't I get that. 00:39:22.079 --> 00:39:30.239 I don't think I don't think there is anything in iOS that is that isn't dismissible with one click if you don't want to use it, if that makes any sense. 00:39:30.480 --> 00:39:33.039 Well if a lot Sorry Jamie, I'm so sorry. 00:39:33.039 --> 00:39:34.719 Uh finish your sentence. 00:39:35.039 --> 00:39:38.960 No, I'm just I can't think of anything where the where it is bloated that gets in the way. 00:39:38.960 --> 00:39:46.960 Now the opposite side, uh Windows, where it's constantly showing me adverts on my own start screen, that's just bananas. 00:39:46.960 --> 00:39:54.639 It's distracting, it's taking resources, it's it's I don't know why there's a little animated man telling me that it's the national day of cricket. 00:39:54.639 --> 00:39:56.400 I I don't care. 00:39:56.400 --> 00:39:57.679 This is my little computer. 00:39:57.679 --> 00:40:03.119 Why is there a thing going why is there a thing going in the corner? 00:40:03.440 --> 00:40:06.960 What if what if I rephrased Phil's question of concern? 00:40:06.960 --> 00:40:08.400 At least help. 00:40:08.400 --> 00:40:19.920 And when was the last time it doesn't have to be Apple, it could be any other big tech firm, has done something that genuinely surprised you and you thought, oh hello, this is is really interesting or amazing. 00:40:19.920 --> 00:40:22.159 Have either of you got an example? 00:40:22.800 --> 00:40:24.639 Yeah, I can

think of a few. 00:40:27.360 --> 00:40:30.239 Maybe you go first, Jamie, it gives Geoff a second to think about it. 00:40:30.239 --> 00:40:32.480 Okay, so go through go for it. 00:40:32.880 --> 00:40:38.079 An example from the agentics stuff that I've been playing with, which in a weird way makes life a lot simpler. 00:40:38.079 --> 00:40:42.079 Because I'm just using my phone to talk to a chatbot that runs on my computer, right? 00:40:42.079 --> 00:40:44.159 So I'm just sending text messages. 00:40:44.159 --> 00:40:55.039 Um I do a lot of presentations, I've got like 300 slide decks, and I'd be asked to do a presentation about autism and autonomy, and I'd have to try and remember when I last talked about it and what I said. 00:40:55.039 --> 00:41:02.880 Um, but all of my uh talks are in keynote files, they're like buried in keynote files, and they're not easily, easily searchable. 00:41:02.880 --> 00:41:11.280 Um, I asked Hermes, the tool that I use, to build me a reverse index, so I could type a type a word and it would find it in all of my talks. 00:41:11.280 --> 00:41:12.880 And it went, okay, I'll do that. 00:41:12.880 --> 00:41:15.760 Hmm, they're keynote files, hmm, they're not accessible. 00:41:15.760 --> 00:41:16.239 Hmm. 00:41:16.239 --> 00:41:18.400 I'll just export all 300 of them. 00:41:18.400 --> 00:41:33.119 So I just watched my computer drive itself to export every single keynote file I'd ever made into a PDF, then do an Ngram topic detection on it, and then come back to me with a web page with a searchable box where I could type any topic I wanted and it would filter the list. 00:41:33.119 --> 00:41:36.800 And it was all accessible, and it just it just did it. 00:41:36.800 --> 00:41:40.880 And I was like, crap, I'm out of the job. 00:41:42.239 --> 00:41:44.079 And that I I love that. 00:41:44.079 --> 00:41:48.400 I mean I'm maybe your your examples are too good sometimes, Jamie. 00:41:48.400 --> 00:42:00.480 Is there is it is there something that Apple has done at a keynote themselves and you've gone, I suppose you know them because they're already speaking to you, but has there been something that they've created and you've gone, oh my goodness, this is a game changer, I didn't see this coming. 00:42:00.800 --> 00:42:09.760 I think the version of Siri that's coming out now and the foothills of it, they're starting to move agentic stuff onto the device, onto Siri itself. 00:42:09.760 --> 00:42:15.039 So being able to ask Siri to find availability in parking spaces for you, that sort of thing. 00:42:15.039 --> 00:42:20.159 It doesn't sound like a lot, but add those little interactions up and it starts to be really helpful. 00:42:20.159 --> 00:42:26.719 The other thing that Siri can do now is Siri can see all the different siloed information across all the different apps that you've got. 00:42:26.719 --> 00:42:31.920 So I, for example, some of my clients are on WhatsApp, some of my clients are on email, some of my clients whatever.

00:42:31.920 --> 00:42:35.760 Being able to say to Siri, where Geoff sent me a file. 00:42:35.760 --> 00:42:39.679 Um where's the file that Geoff sent me about flying? 00:42:39.679 --> 00:42:43.679 And it doesn't matter whether it's in iMessages or or mail or whatever. 00:42:43.679 --> 00:42:47.679 It'll go, Do you mean the availability of aerobility instructors for October? 00:42:47.679 --> 00:42:51.119 Yes, that's what I mean, and it it just gives it to me. 00:42:51.119 --> 00:42:51.519 Right? 00:42:51.519 --> 00:42:54.639 And that's again, all running locally on my own device. 00:42:54.639 --> 00:42:56.159 That's that's very cool. 00:42:57.519 --> 00:43:05.840 For me, I would say um the advent of the iPad was major. 00:43:05.840 --> 00:43:18.079 Um in that laptops were always a huge problem for me because there's too much distance between the edge of the device and the beginning of the keyboard. 00:43:18.079 --> 00:43:22.079 You know, you've got that that bit where you've got the um trackpad. 00:43:22.079 --> 00:43:27.119 And for people with my length of arms, that is just horrendous. 00:43:27.119 --> 00:43:53.199 To be able to take a device with a bigger screen than your phone with a whole website loaded up on it, or a newspaper or uh an ebook or a game or whatever it happens to be, and and to be able to sit and watch it and and and interact with it and then add the Apple pencil to that, which gives, you know, this crappy short arm a bit more reach. 00:43:53.199 --> 00:43:55.760 That was that was major for me. 00:43:55.760 --> 00:43:59.599 I I you know, I for me that felt like a sort of quantum leap. 00:44:00.320 --> 00:44:05.519 Let's whisper this quietly, but unfortunately, Geoff, you've just given ammunition to Phil's argument. 00:44:05.519 --> 00:44:11.199 If the if the iPad was the last time you got surprised, that's fifteen years, twenty years, I don't know. 00:44:11.199 --> 00:44:11.920 That's scary. 00:44:12.320 --> 00:44:14.079 Why why is being surprised valuable? 00:44:14.079 --> 00:44:16.880 I guess that's the bit that I'm not quite understanding the argument. 00:44:16.880 --> 00:44:17.519 Yeah, Phil. 00:44:17.679 --> 00:44:19.840 I think it's my fault. 00:44:19.840 --> 00:44:28.400 I think it's it's it's it's why do people make why do people make videos showing them unboxing a product? 00:44:28.400 --> 00:44:29.280 Oh I have no idea. 00:44:29.280 --> 00:44:30.239 Why do they do that? 00:44:30.239 --> 00:44:32.800 Well, let me help you understand it then, Jamie. 00:44:32.800 --> 00:44:37.280 Is it for either and Geoff and I indulge in the unboxing videos? 00:44:37.280 --> 00:44:43.199 Geoff gets very excited when he gets a new corgi toy, you know, it's the unboxing and looking at it. 00:44:43.199 --> 00:44:58.800 I think it's the surprise of the and then there's this sort of it's like heroin, you know, you inject it and you're very high for as long as it takes you to get the wrapping off, and then you look at it and you think, oh,

that cost me 1800 quid. 00:44:59.039 --> 00:45:00.800 I think we're unraveling something here. 00:45:00.800 --> 00:45:02.400 Jamie, you may or may not know. 00:45:02.400 --> 00:45:04.639 Phil will find a new bit of software, an app. 00:45:04.639 --> 00:45:09.039 He'll tell me and Geoff, this is amazing, he'll convince us, we will start using it. 00:45:09.039 --> 00:45:11.920 We'll see Phil two months later, oh, I don't use that anymore. 00:45:11.920 --> 00:45:12.880 I now use this thing. 00:45:12.880 --> 00:45:15.119 So Phil is shiny and new. 00:45:15.119 --> 00:45:16.719 And I'm like a bit like that. 00:45:16.719 --> 00:45:17.920 So give me what's new. 00:45:17.920 --> 00:45:19.519 It delight me, surprise me. 00:45:19.760 --> 00:45:22.639 I want to I want to live with with Jamie. 00:45:22.639 --> 00:45:24.639 I want to live with Jamie and Lyon. 00:45:24.639 --> 00:45:29.840 I want to be on their sofa so that he can keep inventing things for me to try. 00:45:29.840 --> 00:45:31.760 I think that's marriage. 00:45:31.760 --> 00:45:33.039 There are so many things. 00:45:33.039 --> 00:45:37.599 Wait, I'm proposing to you online, Jamie. 00:45:37.599 --> 00:45:38.559 And line, of course. 00:45:38.559 --> 00:45:42.800 I need to talk to other people in my life, but my sofa is free. 00:45:42.800 --> 00:45:50.000 Um being more serious, and because of time now, let's turn our attention to what might be coming. 00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:53.119 And Jamie, can I give you one piece of things? 00:45:53.199 --> 00:45:53.360 Yeah. 00:45:53.599 --> 00:46:00.159 I've just thought of a piece of tech that's actually been a complete disability game changer for me and completely surprised me because it came out of nowhere. 00:46:00.159 --> 00:46:05.440 Um so I said before, my impairment means I need to lie flat a really long amount of time. 00:46:05.440 --> 00:46:18.880 I'm one of the very rare people with a spinal cord injury where I can be pain free as long as I lie down for like 20 hours, well, 12 to 14 hours a night, as much as I can during the day, and I wear the harnesses and stuff. 00:46:18.880 --> 00:46:23.679 So that means that using things often involves dropping things on my face a lot. 00:46:23.679 --> 00:46:32.000 And uh about a year ago for Christmas, um a friend of mine brought me a mini projector that goes on the floor next to my bed and can project on the ceiling. 00:46:32.000 --> 00:46:35.360 Now, a bit like Geoff, I I've got a I've got a vision impairment. 00:46:35.360 --> 00:46:38.800 Every single projector I'd ever tried, all of them were too small. 00:46:38.800 --> 00:46:51.280 But this little Samsung unit, ultra bright LEDs, incredibly clever lenses, means that it it projects a massive screen that's like half the size of the ceiling from the floor with with this really short throw. 00:46:51.280 --> 00:46:56.559 All of the technology that it's basically got a smartphone in it as well, so you can it can automatically do things. 00:46:56.559 --> 00:47:10.400 That technology has made the product the time when I'm laying flat, I can play video games, I can do phone calls, I can do things which I couldn't do like a year ago because of this really surprising little tiny iny weeny projector. 00:47:10.880 --> 00:47:15.360 Jamie, you've just reminded me, uh, and sorry, Phil, I'm diverting off a little bit. 00:47:15.360 --> 00:47:23.039 I was getting real pain in my left arm because I'd go to bed and spend an hour looking at Instagram, looking at me, da da da. 00:47:23.039 --> 00:47:26.320 And then I bought a gooseneck holder. 00:47:26.320 --> 00:47:31.280 So it I clipped it to the top of my bed and it winds its way out, and I put my phone in it. 00:47:31.280 --> 00:47:35.360 I like your projector, by the way, more than this, but my one meant I didn't have to hold it anymore. 00:47:35.360 --> 00:47:36.239 I could swipe it. 00:47:36.239 --> 00:47:39.760 Admittedly, I am single, and that is because with that stuff. 00:47:39.760 --> 00:47:40.880 That does help a bit. 00:47:40.880 --> 00:47:41.360 Yeah. 00:47:41.360 --> 00:47:48.719 Um, but you're right, those little uh developments of this, it's not even tech, there's ideas that can just make it a lot easier. 00:47:49.039 --> 00:47:55.519 So I I mean, the last few minutes, we don't have much longer left, but what what do you think? 00:47:55.519 --> 00:48:04.719 I mean, Jamie, you're obviously working in a very kind of uh the what's going on in AI and agents and all that stuff, I am deeply interested in, and it's huge. 00:48:04.719 --> 00:48:12.480 I mean it could transform just but from a disabled person's point of view, it could be massive too, because you've shown why in your particular case. 00:48:12.480 --> 00:48:27.840 We don't all have your skill sets, but I'm as you've said, and I I agree with you, um, using AI, and I am forced to use uh the ones you don't like, but at least they're developing things that I can really use and it makes them much more effective. 00:48:27.840 --> 00:48:36.079 But what's the new kid on the block gonna be in and I don't mean that shiny toy stuff, I mean big changes that are coming. 00:48:36.079 --> 00:48:45.360 And and Geoff, in perhaps your case, it may be less about the software and all that stuff, but what you wish was around that isn't currently, what would really change things for you, do you think? 00:48:45.360 --> 00:48:50.000 So Jamie, why don't you kick us off and then we'll bring things to a close? 00:48:50.480 --> 00:48:56.480 So I think it it's it's the agentic stuff, but more importantly, it's agentic stuff that runs on my own hardware. 00:48:56.480 --> 00:48:57.039 You know. 00:48:57.039 --> 00:49:01.039 I would not advocate for anybody to be using the systems that I'm using. 00:49:01.039 --> 00:49:08.320 They are cutting edge to the point where I spent two hours this morning debugging one because it kept repeating what it was doing every five minutes, right? 00:49:08.320 --> 00:49:22.400 It is

cutting cutting edge, and it is unreliable and slow and expensive to run, and sometimes it drives me crazy, and I get days where I get a month's worth of work done, and I get weeks where I get a day's worth of work done because I'm fighting the tools. 00:49:22.400 --> 00:49:27.440 Like they're really, really, really, really new, and that's part of why they're interesting to me, right? 00:49:27.440 --> 00:49:29.440 I'm an RD engineer, it's kind of my job. 00:49:29.599 --> 00:49:29.920 Yeah. 00:49:30.239 --> 00:49:32.719 But that to me is is is the future. 00:49:32.719 --> 00:49:47.119 The idea that we don't interact with computers with pre-built interfaces that somebody else made some assumptions and built and shoved in front of us, but we come to computers with our own way of wanting to interact, and it and it comes back to us how we want it. 00:49:47.119 --> 00:49:58.559 One of my favorite examples of that is a friend of ours um is young and they're black, and um we set up Hermes for them, and I can only describe it as they talk in in black vernacular, right? 00:49:58.559 --> 00:50:10.239 That he can talk to the computer in his language, and the computer comes back in his language, and it he was like, this is this is like reduced the cognitive overload of doing this by like 50% because all computers are designed by white middle class people. 00:50:10.239 --> 00:50:12.719 I don't have a fucking clue what that means, right? 00:50:12.719 --> 00:50:21.440 So, like so this this ability for computers to not just adapt a thing to us but to generate a custom thing for us, I think is huge. 00:50:21.440 --> 00:50:34.480 And then also just why should if I'm booking a if I'm booking a flight, lack of book flights very often, why do I sit in front of the computer and do that when there's an API, there's an AI agent, I can tell it what I need and just have it go and do it? 00:50:34.480 --> 00:50:41.360 Like, I think I don't think that sitting in front of computers is the way that we're going to use computers in the future. 00:50:41.360 --> 00:50:51.760 The same way that sending a uh a stack of 50 cards of um of uh post of of uh punch cards was how computers were operated in the 50s. 00:50:51.760 --> 00:51:04.719 I think we're gonna have a similar sort of shift until the computer ends up being a box in the corner of the house that you always interact with through telegram or chat or voice or whatever, but you don't really go and sit in front of it anymore. 00:51:05.039 --> 00:51:05.360 Okay. 00:51:05.360 --> 00:51:10.320 Geoff, what's what would you what what what what's your take on the future? 00:51:11.119 --> 00:51:21.679 Okay, my take on the future, and I I I I call myself a hive survivor because I've survived numerous collapses of my hive heating system. 00:51:21.679 --> 00:51:25.440 Um and you know, I've experienced them with you. 00:51:25.440 --> 00:51:44.000 It's it's it's sometimes necessitated uh watching lots of YouTube videos and uh me and Dawn sort of scratching our heads and trying to figure it out, and in in the end we figured it out, but it also has involved the expenditure of money to get the plumber to come back and change something or whatever it is. 00:51:44.000 --> 00:52:05.920 I think if you go if you take the example of a simple electrical circuit with a with a bulb and a and a battery, and you know it's not just will this work or not, you know if you if you close the switch and make the circuit apart from the filament blowing in the light bulb, it's just going to work. 00:52:05.920 --> 00:52:36.639 I think there is a level of instability and incompatibility that needs to be ironed out so that when I get into my car, for example, I don't have to think, oh, I wonder if it'll if I'll have problems connecting to Apple CarPlay today, or whether it will be one of those days when, you know, I'll just get in the car, uh the phone will connect to the car, the car will connect to the phone, we can do the navigation, we can listen to the audiobook. 00:52:36.639 --> 00:52:41.440 But you know, it needs to be that light bulb and battery level of certainty. 00:52:41.440 --> 00:52:45.039 I don't want to have to think, oh, I wonder if it's gonna work. 00:52:45.039 --> 00:53:00.960 And if it doesn't work, how are we gonna, you know, just get out of the car, lock the car, get back in the car, restart that, reboot the iPhone, forget the device from Apple CarPlay, re-add the device to cow, you know, this happens on a weekly basis, and that's rubbish. 00:53:00.960 --> 00:53:05.360 Um people often say to me, Oh, well, your life's too technically complicated. 00:53:05.360 --> 00:53:08.960 And I say, Well, no, actually, I just want the stuff to work. 00:53:08.960 --> 00:53:22.079 So for me, the the the real quantum leap will be when you can just install something, plug something in, and it won't be plug and pray, it really will be plug and play. 00:53:23.280 --> 00:53:23.519 Nice. 00:53:23.920 --> 00:53:24.719 Lovely, lovely. 00:53:24.719 --> 00:53:32.079 Yeah, it reminds me very much of my experiences with Windows and having to change the drivers every time he wanted your printer to work. 00:53:32.079 --> 00:53:35.280 Back in the day, three in the morning, still hard at it. 00:53:35.280 --> 00:53:38.320 I mean, we've come a long way from that, but you're right, Geoff. 00:53:38.320 --> 00:53:41.679 So much, even today, does not work reliably. 00:53:41.679 --> 00:53:44.239 Well, look, um, I don't know about you guys. 00:53:44.239 --> 00:53:46.800 I've oh, we've run out of time, Simon. 00:53:46.800 --> 00:53:47.840 An hour's not. 00:53:49.519 --> 00:53:50.639 I thought you were gonna wrap it up. 00:53:50.639 --> 00:53:51.440 You've got a little bit of thought. 00:53:52.159 --> 00:53:52.800 I am wrapping it up. 00:53:52.800 --> 00:53:56.960 I'm sort of I've wrapped it up and said we've got to end and handed it over to you to end it. 00:53:57.280 --> 00:54:01.119 I mean, Jamie needs time to make sure his house is accessible to you now that you're moving in with him. 00:54:01.119 --> 00:54:02.000 I mean yes, absolutely. 00:54:02.239 --> 00:54:05.199 Well, I'm on I'm on the ground floor, we have a wide door. 00:54:05.360 --> 00:54:07.599 Um and you're mainly lying down, so you know. 00:54:07.920 --> 00:54:08.400 Yeah, exactly. 00:54:08.400 --> 00:54:10.000 And we we can build a hoist system. 00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:14.000 We can build a hoist system out of uh bits of roller coaster parts. 00:54:14.000 --> 00:54:14.400 Yes. 00:54:14.639 --> 00:54:17.920 I want to say uh thank you uh so much for both of you. 00:54:17.920 --> 00:54:24.480 I know Jamie and Geoff speak, because occasionally Geoff will say, Jamie says this, and me, Geoff, and Phil speak on tech. 00:54:24.480 --> 00:54:32.320 It's been lovely to bring it all together and to hear uh what you say, what you think, what's going on, and what works for you and what doesn't. 00:54:32.320 --> 00:54:37.119 And I hope for the listener, we've got that blend of access as well as just kind of new ideas around tech. 00:54:37.119 --> 00:54:47.679 Um, I I Jamie, I quote you occasionally, I quote Geoff all the time, but I quote you occasionally with a lovely line you do, which is I won't create anything, uh software that will disable someone. 00:54:47.679 --> 00:54:53.360 Um I might be misquoting you, but I always like that as a line, which is it's back to your tech bros. 00:54:53.360 --> 00:54:57.280 They might make something, but they've got to remember who might be using it. 00:54:57.280 --> 00:54:58.159 Phil. 00:54:59.280 --> 00:55:01.519 I I I'm just in awe of both of them. 00:55:01.519 --> 00:55:09.599 I mean, Geoff, I've I I always go to Geoff as he well knows when I need help with things like iOS and stuff, because he's using it in ways I haven't begun to think about. 00:55:09.599 --> 00:55:12.079 And Jamie, I have serious respect. 00:55:12.079 --> 00:55:16.559 I mean, I remember Jamie way back when I first met him a long time ago now. 00:55:16.559 --> 00:55:20.480 My goodness me, you've come a long way since those days, Jamie, to be fair to you. 00:55:20.480 --> 00:55:20.880 Thank you. 00:55:20.880 --> 00:55:30.480 And I am gonna call you because I'm I am looking at agents and things like that quite seriously, and I think you might be just the person to give me a yeah a steer and so on. 00:55:30.480 --> 00:55:32.320 So but thank you both for your time. 00:55:32.320 --> 00:55:33.679 I I found that really interesting. 00:55:33.679 --> 00:55:35.119 It was really really useful. 00:55:35.119 --> 00:55:35.440 Thank you. 00:55:38.320 --> 00:55:39.440 Likewise, been heaps of fun. 00:55:39.440 --> 00:55:40.639 Catch you again soon sometime.