S1: Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition, available from
S1: January the 21st, 2025. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have
S1: you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio, associated
S1: stations of the Radio Reading Network or 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 tech.
S1: And it can all come usually on a Tuesday afternoon
S1: just after it's been produced. Another option is to ask
S1: your Siri device or smart speaker to play. Vision Australia
S1: radio talking tech podcast. Vision Australia radio talking tech podcast. Well,
S1: Damo McMorrow continues his annual leave. I believe he'll be
S1: back with us next week. I'm speaking with another from
S1: the Access Technology team at Vision Australia and today it's
S1: Access Technology lead, Jim Piepszak from Melbourne. Welcome, Jim.
S2: Thanks, Steve. Good to talk to you again.
S1: Tell us a little about yourself. Um, what's your role, actually,
S1: in the Access Technology team?
S2: Our lead team helps all of the adaptive technology specialists
S2: with advice and helps out, especially when they first start
S2: with us. Most of the adaptive technology specialists really have
S2: no access technology experience. There's very few that do. So
S2: part of our job is is a really good induction,
S2: teaching him all the the bits and pieces that they
S2: need to know. And then it's the ongoing support. In
S2: the beginning we'll go out with them, you know, to
S2: see clients, see how they're going. Give them some advice
S2: along the way. And at any time they can give
S2: us a call and ask us questions. And we also
S2: get together at times and get the all of the
S2: specialists together as as many at a time as possible.
S2: And so it's an ongoing support Their system is basically
S2: what our team's involved in.
S1: They may not have had much experience when they first start.
S1: You've had decades of experience. Tell us about yourself. You
S1: have low vision, don't you?
S2: I'm partially sighted. Legally blind. Yep. About 3% sight. I've
S2: got an interest in sight condition. Mine was from birth,
S2: and I've got scarring on the back of the eye,
S2: so I use my peripheral vision. Technically, I should have
S2: a dead spot in the middle of my eye, but
S2: I don't see it. Probably because, you know, the brain's
S2: a really clever thing, and it fills in that little
S2: gap that would normally be seen so that I walk
S2: into a room and my eyes move around and I
S2: get the entire picture, so I don't get to see
S2: the dead spot at all. Interestingly, sometimes I walk down
S2: the street and somebody just pops out of nowhere because
S2: obviously they were in that spot and my eyes hadn't
S2: moved as yet. But apart from that, I use my
S2: peripheral vision. I use, you know, a screen reader on
S2: the computer. I use a lot of the things that
S2: I talk about all the time when I'm doing group talks.
S1: Now, you said you use a screen reader. Do you
S1: look at text on a screen as well?
S2: I can see that there's text there, but I can't
S2: necessarily read it unless I'm up close and unless I
S2: enlarge it. So but it means that I can follow
S2: along with what the screen reader is reading, and that's
S2: definitely an advantage. Yeah, you can see where the images are,
S2: where the text would be. Um, I've also got enough
S2: sight to be able to use the mouse cursor. I
S2: tend to have the mouse speak anything that's under it.
S2: So by, uh, moving the mouse around the screen, I
S2: can actually sort of skip scan text.
S1: Yeah.
S2: Very interesting. Start on the first paragraph and that's not interesting.
S2: I'll just go to the next one. So yeah that's
S2: a real advantage as well.
S1: So you walked in the door of Vision Australia 30
S1: years ago. What brought you there. What were you doing
S1: before you started this sort of work with the organisation?
S2: Back then I was working for VicRoads as a switchboard operator.
S2: VicRoads had 6000 extensions when I first started. They had
S2: one of those flick folders where, you know, there was
S2: 6000 names on this thing that you had to spin
S2: around and find what it was, which wasn't all that
S2: easy to do because the text was pretty small and
S2: there was eight switchboard operators, you know, all the others
S2: were cited.
S1: So you mean telephone switchboard operators for the modern generation
S1: who mightn't know that concept?
S2: It was one of those switchboard situations where the moment
S2: you open the switchboard in the morning until we close
S2: at 5:00 with eight people answering calls, there was always
S2: 20 calls waiting to be answered. And, you know, that's
S2: how busy it was. So looking up an extension was
S2: pretty vital. But to their credit, they they put computers
S2: in with an interesting system. And so we had a
S2: database of all the extensions. And to their credit they
S2: actually hired someone to make the system talk. Took him
S2: three months to do it. I could then look up
S2: a name and it would actually tell me what it was,
S2: tell me what the extension was, and it made things
S2: so much quicker. We're talking 37, 38 years ago. That
S2: was my first introduction to a computer.
S1: Then you joined what was then the Royal Victorian Institute
S1: for the blind became Vision Australia. Years later, in 1994,
S1: what were you doing just prior to joining the organisation?
S1: Why did you join?
S2: Luckily, I started picking up books and reading about the
S2: computers and the speech, and on my rostered days off,
S2: I was actually selling the system to other government departments
S2: and installing it. David Blythe, who a lot of listeners
S2: might know of David Blythe, was one of the managers
S2: at the Beeb at the time, and he he approached
S2: me and offered me a position as an adaptive technology
S2: consultant because he wanted somebody who had a vision impairment
S2: doing the job. He thought that was would be a
S2: really good need, and that wasn't around at the time.
S2: And there were very few. Adaptive technology consultants around the
S2: country at that time. And there was really the vibe
S2: had the vast majority of them. There's another one in Sydney.
S2: There weren't many. So those early years, when David offered
S2: me the position, I jumped at it. It was just
S2: something new for me and and being able to get
S2: in and actually help other people. That's what I really
S2: wanted to do. I love that, you know, getting together
S2: with people and showing them, you know, what's available, showing
S2: them what's around.
S1: I seem to remember one of the main issues of
S1: the day was this business of using the DOS or
S1: text environment, and then computerization moved to the graphic user
S1: interface as it was described with the graphic icons on
S1: the screen. There was that. And what other things were
S1: you really thinking about at the time?
S2: DOS was easy. I actually thought that was a really
S2: easy system for screen readers and other programs. Windows came
S2: in and that was a whole new world. We were
S2: lucky that people like Joyce now Freedom Scientific got into that.
S2: Windows Arctic was around then. It was extremely expensive equipment
S2: back then. The other problem was, of course, being able
S2: to read a document. Just something you're given. So, you know,
S2: OCR devices at the time, it was reading a bill,
S2: reading a letter, all that sort of thing. They were
S2: the the real challenges of the time.
S1: And even computerized PDF was impossible. And it was a
S1: bad word amongst the blindness and low vision community back
S1: in the mid to late 90s, wasn't it?
S2: Very much, yeah. It was very difficult to to try
S2: and read those sort of documents. Yeah. We've come a long,
S2: long way in that period of time.
S1: So what have been some of the highlights for you
S1: over that time while you've been with Vision Australia?
S2: It's those periods where something came in that really changed
S2: the something like there were mobile phones, you know, you
S2: Nokia mobile phones, but all you could do is make
S2: a call and receive a call. Right up until the
S2: Symbian operating system came in and talks was released. So
S2: there was a program for the mobile phone called talks,
S2: and it spoke everything you could. All of a sudden
S2: you could read your text messages, you could, you know,
S2: go into your contacts and, and have hundreds of contacts
S2: and they'd all be read out to you. And then
S2: came a program for those phones called K-nfb reader. And
S2: that was a program where you could take a photo
S2: of a document and it would read it to you.
S2: And yeah, for something that was, They're so small, so
S2: pocket sized. You could read a document, you read a
S2: sign on a wall. It was surprisingly accurate.
S1: What was your impression around late 2009 when you first
S1: saw an iPhone?
S2: Yeah, that was pretty amazing. I can still remember the
S2: the talk that Steve Jobs gave when he introduced the
S2: the iPhone. He spoke for an hour about everything it
S2: can do. And at the end he said, oh yeah.
S2: And it can make phone calls. Yeah. And of course,
S2: the very first iPhone didn't have the accessibility built into it.
S2: But when they brought in VoiceOver, the world just changed. Yeah.
S2: That was your computer in your pocket.
S1: Mhm. Well let's look forward now thinking about the present
S1: and what's ahead over the next few years. What are
S1: you going to be playing with.
S2: Yeah. Artificial intelligence of course is the big thing at
S2: the moment. And what it can do now there's, there's
S2: all sorts of equipment around, but the interesting stuff is
S2: Rayban glasses, for instance. It's not meant for people with
S2: a vision impairment. It just happens to work for us.
S2: I think it was a real accident that the artificial
S2: intelligence that they put in there, uh, actually works for, um,
S2: you know, for people with a vision impairment. All of
S2: a sudden, people started saying, hey, we can do this
S2: and we can do that. And the people that actually, uh,
S2: puts in all of the intelligence into the glasses started
S2: to think, well, this does more than what we thought
S2: it was going to do, because.
S1: Originally it was just thought of as a solution for
S1: people who wanted to be able to take videos, listen
S1: to their music, etc., hands.
S2: Free. Exactly. And, you know, it was like I said,
S2: it was more of an accident that the, uh, the AI, uh,
S2: component to it actually did a lot more people might
S2: be familiar with an app called Be My eyes. They
S2: now have be my eyes built into those glasses. And
S2: the really interesting thing was all of the engineers, all
S2: of the software engineers, they can choose what they want
S2: to work on. The vast majority wanted to work on
S2: that component, because it had that something that was completely
S2: different from what they're used to, and they really liked
S2: the idea of being able to, you know, help out
S2: a whole stack of vision impaired people.
S1: So I was thinking about these devices, like the meta
S1: glasses and some of the what we would call mobility
S1: devices that are going to be around. How do you
S1: think people are going to do things differently, things they
S1: couldn't do before? How is it going to change people's lives?
S2: Well, that's the interesting thing. You really don't know. You
S2: can go around, you can do things, and then somebody
S2: will do things out of the box. Then everybody else
S2: realizes they can do that too. So it's a bit
S2: like when the iPhone was introduced. I don't believe that
S2: Apple really knew what it was going to end up.
S2: And that's with all of these new devices that are
S2: going to be coming out, all of the new the
S2: new mobility devices that'll have the artificial intelligence built into it.
S2: It'll be able to tell you when when something's coming
S2: up that you're going to bump into or going to
S2: need to move left or right. It's going to give
S2: you all sorts of information that is going to be
S2: absolutely amazing. But I don't know that we really know
S2: what the end result is going to be until, you know,
S2: everyone gets it in their hands and are able to
S2: start playing with it.
S1: And the word gets out very quickly now, doesn't it?
S1: Because we can easily listen to a webinar that's taking
S1: place in another part of the world. There's old fashioned
S1: email lists and other forms of social media that get
S1: the information out to blind and low vision people that
S1: couldn't have been done decades ago.
S2: Yeah, well, when I started, there were bulletin boards. There
S2: was no such thing as Google around. And, you know,
S2: Google has made all the difference. So YouTube, we can
S2: see all of those videos and, and look at the
S2: technology and see what it's going to going to do,
S2: how to how to use it. It is amazing. Absolutely amazing.
S1: Jim, it's been terrific speaking with you today. Good luck
S1: with your work as it continues with Vision Australia. And
S1: I hope we can talk again sometime on talking tech.
S2: Same here. Thank you.
S1: I've been speaking with Jim Piepszak, who is an Access
S1: technology lead with Vision Australia based in Melbourne. Before we go,
S1: a reminder that you can find details of this and
S1: previous editions of the program by going to VA radio,
S1: Talking Tech, VA Radio, Talking Tech, and to write to
S1: the program, all you need to do is write to
S1: Damo at Vision Australia, Damo at Vision Australia. This has
S1: been talking tech. My guest has been Jim Piepszak. Vision Australia,
S1: access technology lead. I'm Stephen Jolley. Stay safe. We'll talk
S1: more tech next week.
S3: See you.