S1: Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from
S1: July the 2nd, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have
S1: you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia radio associated
S1: stations of RPA Australia or perhaps the Community Radio Network.
S1: There is also the podcast. To catch that, all you
S1: need to do is search for the two words talking
S1: tech and down. It can all come usually on a
S1: Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced. Another option is
S1: to ask your Siri device or smart speaker to play
S1: Vision Australia Radio talking tech podcast Vision Australia Radio talking
S1: tech podcast with me, someone who can explain all this
S1: tech stuff really well. Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology,
S1: David Woodbridge. David, let's start with our Product Minute, a
S1: product from the vision store of Vision Australia.
S2: Indeed. So this is called the Archon Desk stand and
S2: Archons actually Archon. It's an extremely adjustable stand for a smartphone.
S2: So you've got the base which is made out of metal.
S2: Then you've got this telescopic pole that actually extends out,
S2: I think, up to a meter if you pull it
S2: right out. Um, normally it's about 30cm. And then the
S2: arm that comes out which holds the smartphone, it's got
S2: these little articulated little arms that you can adjust in
S2: all different directions, because each little arm of which is
S2: three has got little ball joints. So you can sort
S2: of rotate them around. So in effect you can have
S2: your smartphone in any position you like, whether it's portrait, landscape,
S2: upside down, whatever you like. So it's a really good
S2: stand for when you want to do things like video
S2: conferencing or optical character recognition and so on. My wife
S2: uses her one and her craft room on Facebook and
S2: so on. She uses it so that on her main
S2: laptop screen, on her Mac, she can see what she's
S2: doing on YouTube and Facebook, and then she just uses
S2: the camera on her smartphone to point down at what
S2: she's doing for crafting. So it does have multiple uses.
S2: It's a well known standard. It's been around for a
S2: long time, so if you're after a really good desktop,
S2: as in you put it on your table stand for
S2: a smartphone, it comes in really handy. So again, it's
S2: Arkon Arkon desktop smartphone stand.
S1: How much does it cost?
S2: It's about $225. There is an attachment which we don't
S2: sell for an iPad, but you can always get them
S2: from a, you know, overseas or Amazon.
S1: The icon desktop stand from the vision store at Vision Australia.
S1: There was chatter last week about X. We used to
S1: call it Twitter. Its accessibility disappeared. It's come back. But
S1: tell us the story.
S2: This was actually quite bizarre. So early last week um,
S2: there was a shadow on Applevis saying, you know, you
S2: can't read tweets properly anymore. You only get the person
S2: who's tweeting his name or the handle, and you don't
S2: get anything else like the text of the actual tweet.
S2: So everybody started whinging about it and complaining about it
S2: on on Twitter, of course. And then everybody was thinking,
S2: I guess, or at least I wasn't like, oh God,
S2: here we go again. It's going to be like this
S2: all over again. We're going to have to actually fight
S2: our battle. But lo and behold, 48 hours later. So
S2: let's say from Wednesday to Friday last week, a new
S2: version popped up. So that was like a 0.01 release
S2: or whatever it was. And then the accessibility for VoiceOver
S2: came back. And again, I think it just said, you know,
S2: I release this for for bug fixes so you don't
S2: have to fix it, your typical sort of boilerplate statement.
S2: But it was fixed. So I don't know whether, you know,
S2: somebody saw it on Twitter and said, oh dear, here's
S2: a blindness community rightly getting annoyed again. Um, or there's
S2: still some software engineers at Twitter or X, because remember
S2: when good old Elon Musk took over, he got rid
S2: of lots of people, including the accessibility team for Twitter X.
S2: So everybody thought, well, here we go. This is going
S2: to be the end of end of days as we
S2: know it. Um, but yeah, as I just said, lo
S2: and behold, it works again. So just make sure that your,
S2: your app is completely updated and then you should be
S2: fine with voice over again. But I think it was
S2: just remarkable about how fast that bug was fixed.
S1: So for those who use ECS, things are back to
S1: normal or as they were smart AI apps with the
S1: smartphone camera. Let's have a talk about that today. Explain
S1: what that is. And then we can go through the
S1: various products that are available.
S2: Yep. So you might remember last week we spoke about
S2: three main wearables. We spoke about AR, vision, Orcam and
S2: envision AI. Now there's different sort of versions of that
S2: for your smartphone. So rather than wearing your, you know,
S2: your smart eye stuff, this stuff, as far as apps
S2: are concerned, are actually built into the smartphone, i.e. both
S2: Android and iPhone. So what we're really talking about is
S2: similar wearable hardware that is really apps running on your smartphone.
S1: Let's start then, with what's available through both iOS and Android.
S2: So the first one that I always love to mention,
S2: of course, is the be my eyes API function. And
S2: that's where you can take a photo. Um, and for
S2: me it's a lot more extensive than these sort of
S2: automatic scene detection apps. This one really goes through extensively
S2: what it sees in the photo. And then of course,
S2: you can also interrogate and ask questions about the photo. Um,
S2: it actually said my desk had coffee stains on it,
S2: which I was horrified by. So I went and quickly
S2: wiped it up. And then I ran it again and said, nope, nope.
S2: I didn't detect any coffee stains, so that was really good.
S2: But no, it actually does work really nicely. So, um,
S2: and as I said, for be my Eyes, I um,
S2: for both Android and iPhone, it works really nice. And
S2: also it's very, very quick.
S1: It's my go to place for getting descriptions of photos.
S2: Yeah, absolutely. Same same here.
S1: The next one envision I.
S2: Yeah. So this has the the similar functionality to what
S2: we talked about last week with the envision smart glasses. Uh,
S2: so you've got things like, you know, text detection, scene detection,
S2: currency detection, all that sort of normal stuff. Um, it's
S2: a very robust app. Now, I also happen to see
S2: in a beta testing last week to there's a new
S2: one coming out besides the envision AI app called Envision
S2: Assistant and what it is, it's a similar thing to
S2: what the Be My Eyes AI does. You take a
S2: photo and then you can use AI to interrogate the photo.
S2: And I've been having a look at the beta version
S2: of it, and it does work very nicely. And I
S2: think again, it's based on ChatGPT. So that's something else
S2: to look forward to, um, coming up in the next
S2: couple of months, or maybe even less.
S1: Tell us about seeing AI, which has been around a while.
S2: Yes. So this is a really famous one from Microsoft. Um,
S2: and you will remember that it does things like short text.
S2: So instant text, document reading, barcode scanning, scene detection, face detection,
S2: Handwriting detection. Color detection. Currency detection and also handwriting. So
S2: it does everything in the toolbox and actually works really well.
S2: So it does expand the functionality of both Android and
S2: iOS very dramatically. So that's almost my other one of
S2: my my favorite toolkit apps. When I'm talking about AI
S2: all the time.
S1: What about scene detection across both platforms?
S2: It really does get a bit wonky because I think
S2: last week when we talked about the hardware, I did
S2: leave this to the end of the discussion when I
S2: was talking about all the features, because I did say
S2: scene detection is not robust enough. It's based on what
S2: the camera is seeing, it's based on light and everything else.
S2: And then it has to then, you know, put that
S2: image against other images that it's previously had a look
S2: at and then come out of result. And I always
S2: find it's about, oh, 85, 90% accurate. But I noticed
S2: on an app that I haven't mentioned the program, it's
S2: not very stable. There was a warning on it. Please
S2: do not take the information that this app will give
S2: you as being true, because images are affected by lots
S2: of different processing issues. So I thought that was a really,
S2: really good warning and a good thing to keep in
S2: mind in general.
S1: And is that on both Android and iOS? Yes. Mhm.
S1: Tell us about an Android One called lookout.
S2: So this is from Google itself. And it is almost
S2: like Google's versions of Microsoft seeing AI app. So it
S2: basically does everything that they're seeing AI app does. Now
S2: there's one little thing that's a bit of an unknown
S2: feature in Seeing Eye that people might have forgotten about.
S2: You can say, I want to find something, and then
S2: you determine what you want to find, such as, you know,
S2: your keys and someone. So you're literally take a photo
S2: of your keys and then you say, these are my keys.
S2: And next time it's looking for your keys, it knows
S2: what your keys look like. Well, there's sort of a
S2: similar version on the lookout app called find, except it's
S2: a bit more generic. So when you say I want
S2: to find something, it brings up a list of things
S2: like door, chair, table, cup and so on. And then
S2: you choose one of those particular items so it knows
S2: it's got to look for a cup, and then it
S2: will tell you how far it's away when it sees
S2: that particular item, in this case a cup. So it's
S2: not as flexible as the CI1 where you can either
S2: choose generic ones or customize it, but it still works
S2: really well. So look out to me is, uh, let's
S2: say 95% of what the AI app can do.
S1: Let's look forward to iOS 18, which comes to the
S1: public late September, probably. What have you been finding there
S1: with your beta exploration?
S2: This stuff is actually pretty amazing what Apple is doing.
S2: So all the stuff I'm about to talk about was
S2: originally in the magnification app. It's now part of VoiceOver rotor,
S2: and the whole sort of menu on your radar is
S2: called Live Detection. And underneath live detection you've got things
S2: like door detection, scene detection, the point and speak function
S2: for using touch screens, people detection, and of course text detection.
S2: So what happens is you use the rotor to rotate
S2: around to life detection. You flick down to the one
S2: you want, such as door detection. You double tap it,
S2: it then turns it on. But then what you've got
S2: is a four finger triple tap. That ten turns that
S2: voice detection on or off. So depending on what function
S2: you've got running in this case, you know, door or
S2: whatever else, it then only detects that particular function. The
S2: only one that's missing for me. And this is why
S2: I put it in the show notes for a list
S2: is object detection, where it actually uses the camera to
S2: tell you how far an object is away, whether it's
S2: in within, you know, arm's reach within about 1 or
S2: 2m away or further away. So I think if Apple
S2: added that to the live detection rater, they'd practically have
S2: everything covered. And what I do find with the live
S2: detection very quickly is the scene detection on all these
S2: ones tends to babble a lot. So it keeps saying
S2: window blind, window blind, window blind, but because you can
S2: quickly toggle it on and off, you just turn it
S2: on when you want. As soon as you got the
S2: information you want, you turn it off again with that
S2: four finger triple tap and off you go. So it's
S2: getting very, very flexible in what VoiceOver can do in
S2: iOS 18 beta.
S1: This is very nice, all this stuff, but ergonomically it
S1: can be a bit challenging. A lot of us walk
S1: along with only one hand available, because the other hand
S1: might be holding a cane or the harness of a dog.
S1: How do we get around this? Because you need to
S1: be able to manage the phone.
S2: The first thing is you've got to have a thing
S2: to put the phone in. So normally it's a chest harness.
S2: My chest harness that I've got for my smartphone does portrait.
S2: So up and down all landscape. So that's number one.
S2: Number two which I haven't found to be that dramatically fantastic,
S2: is using voice control to use voice over to then
S2: navigate the smartphone screen and for iOS. So things like,
S2: you know, flick left flick right, magic double tap. That
S2: gets very laborious when you're trying to use, um, an
S2: object recognition type app. The third one, which is what
S2: I always use on my one, is a little keyboard
S2: that I've had for a long time called the Revo
S2: Keyboard Revo. It's about the size of a credit card. Um,
S2: of course a little bit thicker because it's got keys
S2: on it and because I can use it one handed.
S2: All I really need to do with that keyboard is
S2: press four and six to go left and right. I
S2: press five to select and a few other little keys.
S2: So basically I can use about 5 or 6 keys
S2: to completely navigate voice over. Of course, the only thing
S2: it hasn't got for iOS beta yet is to turn
S2: that voice live recognition on and off toggle. But besides that,
S2: I can completely control my iPhone from this little keyboard.
S1: Well, there's a lot more with AI and the camera
S1: we'll talk about in the future, and I look forward
S1: to that. It's going to be interesting. Yep. Before we go,
S1: a reminder of where there are details of what we've
S1: been talking about in this and previous editions of the program.
S2: Indeed. So as always, you can check out my blog
S2: site which is David Woodburn dot Podbean pad Bayern Comm David.
S1: Wood beard Podbean podbean.com to right to the program, you can.
S2: Write to me at Vision Australia or Work, which is
S2: David Woodbridge how it sounds at Vision australia.org David.
S1: Dot Woodbridge at Vision Australia. Org this has been talking
S1: tech with me has been Vision Australia's national advisor on
S1: access technology David Woodbridge I'm Stephen Jolly take care. We'll
S1: talk more tech next week. See you.