April 8, 2025 • 14 mins
This week we cover:
- Information about the Vision Australia Alexa Smart Home Program with inquiries welcome at voiceassist@visionaustralia.org;
- News of the latest updates to the BT Speak from Blazie Technology with further information at https://blazietech.com;
- News of the Orbit Speak from Orbit Research with further information at https://orbitresearch.com
- News of the latest software updates from Apple.
To access the program, presented each week by Stephen Jolley and Damo McMorrow you can go to varadio.org/talkingtech
To write to the show use damo.mcmorrow@visionaustralia.org
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:08):
Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from
April the 8th, 2025. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have
you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio, associated
stations of the Radio Reading Network or the Community Radio Network.
There is also the podcast. To catch that, all you
need to do is search for the two words talking
(00:28):
tech and Dan. It can all come usually on a
Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced. Another option is
to ask your Siri device or smart speaker to play.
Vision Australia radio talking tech podcast. Vision Australia radio talking
tech podcast with me. Vision Australia's national access technology manager.
Damo McMorrow. Hey, Damo. G'day, Stephen. Tell us about a
(00:53):
program of Vision Australia that's been going for some time.
The Vision Australia Alexa smart home program.
S2 (01:01):
We're actually about to do another run of this program,
so we're commencing the program in May. The idea is
that it's for people who perhaps haven't used smart speakers before.
And the program includes a free Amazon Echo pop speaker.
It's an eight week program. It's one hour a week,
(01:24):
and it's sort of in small groups of usually four participants,
with one of our facilitators, all of whom are blind
or low vision themselves. And it's to to show you
what you can do with a smart speaker. The beauty
of these is that you don't have to have, you know,
massive technology skills. You don't have to know your way
(01:44):
around a keyboard. There's no gestures because everything you do,
you do with your voice. So it's a really good
way to sort of get information, you know, to show
you how to do things like, you know, getting the
news and weather through the speaker, but also things like
reading your audible books, your, um, Kindle books, uh, and even,
you know, how to set up routines so it plays
(02:06):
your favorite news bulletin in the morning and you know,
we can turn on your aircon or your smart lights
or those sorts of things. It's funded through either the
Home Care package or Commonwealth Home Support Programme or funding. And, uh,
we will be starting the next program in May. Um,
either the 5th or the 12th of May at this stage.
(02:28):
So if people are interested in finding out more or
potentially registering, they can email voice assist all one word
at Vision Australia and a member of the team will
get in touch and, um, you know, provide more information
and go through a few, uh, sort of questions to
make sure it's going to be suitable for you.
S1 (02:48):
Voice assist at Vision Australia. Remind us about the actual
device that you use, the Amazon device.
S2 (02:58):
Yeah. So the Echo Pop is a it's a small speaker. Um,
it's sort of, uh, what would you describe it as?
Half a half a sphere, I suppose, in shape. So
half a ball. It's the sort of thing you could
just sort of sit on your kitchen counter top, your
bedside table, that kind of thing. And there's no screen
on them. So you, you know, you trigger the device
(03:20):
by sort of saying the wake word, which is usually
Alexa or something similar. Um, you can you can customize
that and then just asking it a question. So play
612 ABC Brisbane or is it going to rain today.
And if so, when and what's the current score in
the test between Australia and India? You know, all of
(03:43):
those kinds of things you can do. You can, as
I said, play radio stations. You can um, read if
you've got we I remember we had a participant who
had been using a Kindle device, and, uh, his vision
had got to the point where he could no longer
read it, and he'd set it aside about 18 months
prior and thought, okay, my reading days are done. And, um,
(04:05):
he learnt in the program that he could read his
Kindle book on the, um, Amazon Echo pop. Speaker. And
it basically continued exactly where he'd left off on the
Kindle 18 months before. And so he was he was
rapt that he could continue to read all the Kindle
books that he'd got.
S1 (04:21):
Do you have to purchase the device before the program,
or does Vision Australia arrange that?
S2 (04:27):
No. So we we provide the device as part of
the program. So we there's no sort of cost to
the device as such. Um, and we also have we
work with an installation partner. So what happens is we
send the speaker out and then our installation partner contacts you,
and they send a technician out to actually get it
connected to your Wi-Fi network for you. Uh, create an
(04:48):
Amazon account if you need one. Uh, all of that
kind of thing so that it's up and running and
ready to use with the the program.
S1 (04:55):
Sounds pretty good. And the email address to enquire again.
S2 (05:00):
Voice assist all one word at Vision Australia or.
S1 (05:04):
Voice assist at Vision Australia. Org for the smart home
program that starts in early May. Good luck with that one.
Thank you. Now, our friend the BT speak, since we
last spoke about it, it's had two monthly updates. Please explain.
S2 (05:22):
So the BT speak, just as a quick refresher, is
a small they the Blasi tech call it a pocket computer.
It is a small pocket sized device with a Perkins
style Braille keyboard and speech output. They've done some fairly
major reworkings in the last couple of updates, so some
of the features that we now have are a number
(05:43):
of enhancements to the editor, which is sort of the
main note taker function of the device. The other one,
the other thing that they've done is, um, an ability
to search through menus because it is a menu driven system,
and often things might be 2 or 3 levels deep
in the menus. So you can now search for a
particular function if you wish. And there's also they've introduced
(06:09):
a way of being able to send emails. So the
device has two modes, kind of a traditional, they call
traditional mode, which is sort of replicates the old Braylon
speak from back in the 90s, and then it has
desktop mode where you can go into the Linux desktop. Now,
previously emails were done, uh, using the Thunderbird email client
(06:33):
in desktop mode. But what they've done is developed some
workarounds so that you don't have to go into desktop mode.
You can trigger a new email or reply to an
email and things like that from within traditional mode, which
is is nice, um, because it's a much more friendly
sort of interface. And you don't have to learn the,
the orca desktop screen reader. So, um, you know, as
(06:55):
we've said before on the show, they do, um, add
new features very regularly. And, uh, it is becoming quite
a capable little device.
S1 (07:04):
Now, you've been playing with an alternate device recently, the
orbit speak from Orbit Research. How does that stack up?
S2 (07:13):
That was an interesting thing. I, I saw one at
CSUN and decided I wanted it. Um, and look, they
both do different things extremely well. The orbit speak is,
I guess, the, the best way to describe it is
that the orbit speak really is kind of a pocket
note taker, rather than a pocket sort of computing device.
(07:37):
So it doesn't have, uh, you know, um, things like
the Chrome or Firefox web browsers built into it and
those sorts of things. Now, having said that, the things
that it's designed to do, it does exceptionally well. The
footprint is similar, but it's a little bit thinner than
the BT speak. And that was one of the reasons
(07:57):
I like it, because I can put it into a
man bag or a bum bag and, you know, carry
it around and it takes up less room. It just
fits in there a little bit better. It's about the
same footprint as my iPhone 15 Pro and probably a
similar thickness, to be honest. Um, it, uh, it feels
(08:18):
a little bit better in terms of finish than the
BT speak. The BT speak the plastic case has some
sort of rough edges and that kind of thing. And
the keyboard is very is a lot less rattly or clicky.
The keyboard is actually very similar to if you've seen
the orbit Reader 20 or the orbit writer. It's using
a similar eight key keyboard, but it does also have
(08:41):
a little d pad where you can go up, down, left,
and right. The advantage of that, um, in my particular
use case, I, I went shopping last week. I was
wanting to try some South African cooking and, uh, had
quite a shopping list, and it meant that I could
carry the unit in one hand and just operate the
d pad with my thumb. I had each shopping list
item on a new line. I find doing that on
(09:04):
the BT speak where you're doing chorded commands. I find
that kind of difficult one handed. Uh, obviously the reason
I'm doing it one handed is because I was being sighted,
guided around the, um, the South African grocery store. Um,
the speech, I think, is a little better. Uh, well,
not the speech. It does come standard with the vocalizer voices,
but it has one speaker, but it's a slightly bigger speaker,
(09:27):
so it seems to me to sound less tinny. Um,
it does have things like a clock, a calendar, a
contacts function, um, an alarm, you know, those sorts of things.
It's got a web, radio and a very good and
easy to use media player. So it does have some
other functions apart from the note taker. But I think,
(09:50):
you know, kind of depends what you want it for. Um,
the other thing of course, because it runs Android and
it behaves a little more like your phone in terms
of when you put it to sleep, it goes to
sleep and doesn't draw a lot of battery, whereas the
BT speak, um, it does get warm and it probably
will still be flat overnight. It just goes into a
slightly lower power consumption kind of mode. Whereas the, um,
(10:14):
orbit speak, when you put it to sleep, it, it,
it goes to sleep like your phone so you can
put it into sleep mode. Come back to it five
days later and you'll be exactly where you were, and
you won't have lost a lot of battery. So, you know,
there are like all these things. There are pros and cons,
I think, as a straight sort of portable note taker device,
kind of pen and paper replacement, if you will. The
(10:35):
orbit speak does a better job. If you want to
tinker and play with Linux and still use it with,
you know, desktop browsers and YouTube and things like that,
then the BT speak is probably the way to go.
S1 (10:47):
Tell us about the price of the orbit speak and
how it compares with BT speak.
S2 (10:52):
Uh, it is quite a bit cheaper. So the orbit
speak sells for I think, 695 US. So by the
time you convert that it probably works out at around
about $1,000. Whereas the BT speak is I think 1199 US.
(11:12):
So by the time you get it here, you're probably
looking at something in the order of a little over $2,000.
So there is a significant price difference.
S1 (11:20):
So we've been talking about the BT speak and the
orbit speak from Orbit Research. Apple dropped some software updates
last week.
S2 (11:31):
They did iOS 18.4. And they also released a sort
of a minor update for devices that are not capable
of running iOS 18, just to sort of plug some
security holes. I think there are a couple of good
features for VoiceOver users in this latest update. They have
(11:52):
a couple of additional verbosity controls now, so when you
are scrolling through content, you can elect to have it
say or not say things like heading. Uh, those kinds
of attributes. And you can also tell it whether to
speak those before or after the name of the item.
(12:13):
The other one that I was quite pleased to see was, uh,
for those who use Braille displays, there is now a
gesture which enables you to do a double tap and hold.
So a good example of where you might do this
is if you use either WhatsApp or the Apple iMessage
program to send voice messages where you want to sort
(12:36):
of tap and hold your finger on the record button.
And then when you let it go, it stops recording
and sends the message. So there's now a way to
do that, a key sequence, a chorded command using your
spacebar that you can sort of press once, which will
initiate the double tap and hold. And then you press
it again. And that that lets sort of releases the gesture. Um,
(12:57):
there's also several bug fixes. Um, and as always, a
couple of new bugs as well, I think. Um, I
haven't come across them yet. They're obviously not major ones,
I don't think, but definitely some nice improvements there in
iOS 18.4 for VoiceOver users.
S1 (13:14):
And at the same time, upgrades for watchOS and for
Mac OS and Probably tvOS, so I haven't seen much
about that yet.
S2 (13:24):
No, I haven't looked into the TV one, but definitely
the the watchOS and the Mac OS. Sequoia gets an
update as well. Yeah.
S1 (13:31):
But certainly for the iPhone and for the iPad, it's
18.4 is the new version. That's right. Before we go,
a reminder that you can find details of what we've
been talking about in this and previous editions of the
program by going to VA radio. VA. And to write
(13:54):
to the program.
S2 (13:55):
You can email me. At Vision Australia.
S1 (14:06):
At Vision Australia. This has been talking tech with me
has been Vision Australia's national access technology manager Damo McMorrow.
I'm Stephen Jolly. Stay safe. We'll talk more tech next week.
S3 (14:18):
See you.
Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from
April the 8th, 2025. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have
you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio, associated
stations of the Radio Reading Network or the Community Radio Network.
There is also the podcast. To catch that, all you
need to do is search for the two words talking
(00:28):
tech and Dan. It can all come usually on a
Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced. Another option is
to ask your Siri device or smart speaker to play.
Vision Australia radio talking tech podcast. Vision Australia radio talking
tech podcast with me. Vision Australia's national access technology manager.
Damo McMorrow. Hey, Damo. G'day, Stephen. Tell us about a
(00:53):
program of Vision Australia that's been going for some time.
The Vision Australia Alexa smart home program.
S2 (01:01):
We're actually about to do another run of this program,
so we're commencing the program in May. The idea is
that it's for people who perhaps haven't used smart speakers before.
And the program includes a free Amazon Echo pop speaker.
It's an eight week program. It's one hour a week,
(01:24):
and it's sort of in small groups of usually four participants,
with one of our facilitators, all of whom are blind
or low vision themselves. And it's to to show you
what you can do with a smart speaker. The beauty
of these is that you don't have to have, you know,
massive technology skills. You don't have to know your way
(01:44):
around a keyboard. There's no gestures because everything you do,
you do with your voice. So it's a really good
way to sort of get information, you know, to show
you how to do things like, you know, getting the
news and weather through the speaker, but also things like
reading your audible books, your, um, Kindle books, uh, and even,
you know, how to set up routines so it plays
(02:06):
your favorite news bulletin in the morning and you know,
we can turn on your aircon or your smart lights
or those sorts of things. It's funded through either the
Home Care package or Commonwealth Home Support Programme or funding. And, uh,
we will be starting the next program in May. Um,
either the 5th or the 12th of May at this stage.
(02:28):
So if people are interested in finding out more or
potentially registering, they can email voice assist all one word
at Vision Australia and a member of the team will
get in touch and, um, you know, provide more information
and go through a few, uh, sort of questions to
make sure it's going to be suitable for you.
S1 (02:48):
Voice assist at Vision Australia. Remind us about the actual
device that you use, the Amazon device.
S2 (02:58):
Yeah. So the Echo Pop is a it's a small speaker. Um,
it's sort of, uh, what would you describe it as?
Half a half a sphere, I suppose, in shape. So
half a ball. It's the sort of thing you could
just sort of sit on your kitchen counter top, your
bedside table, that kind of thing. And there's no screen
on them. So you, you know, you trigger the device
(03:20):
by sort of saying the wake word, which is usually
Alexa or something similar. Um, you can you can customize
that and then just asking it a question. So play
612 ABC Brisbane or is it going to rain today.
And if so, when and what's the current score in
the test between Australia and India? You know, all of
(03:43):
those kinds of things you can do. You can, as
I said, play radio stations. You can um, read if
you've got we I remember we had a participant who
had been using a Kindle device, and, uh, his vision
had got to the point where he could no longer
read it, and he'd set it aside about 18 months
prior and thought, okay, my reading days are done. And, um,
(04:05):
he learnt in the program that he could read his
Kindle book on the, um, Amazon Echo pop. Speaker. And
it basically continued exactly where he'd left off on the
Kindle 18 months before. And so he was he was
rapt that he could continue to read all the Kindle
books that he'd got.
S1 (04:21):
Do you have to purchase the device before the program,
or does Vision Australia arrange that?
S2 (04:27):
No. So we we provide the device as part of
the program. So we there's no sort of cost to
the device as such. Um, and we also have we
work with an installation partner. So what happens is we
send the speaker out and then our installation partner contacts you,
and they send a technician out to actually get it
connected to your Wi-Fi network for you. Uh, create an
(04:48):
Amazon account if you need one. Uh, all of that
kind of thing so that it's up and running and
ready to use with the the program.
S1 (04:55):
Sounds pretty good. And the email address to enquire again.
S2 (05:00):
Voice assist all one word at Vision Australia or.
S1 (05:04):
Voice assist at Vision Australia. Org for the smart home
program that starts in early May. Good luck with that one.
Thank you. Now, our friend the BT speak, since we
last spoke about it, it's had two monthly updates. Please explain.
S2 (05:22):
So the BT speak, just as a quick refresher, is
a small they the Blasi tech call it a pocket computer.
It is a small pocket sized device with a Perkins
style Braille keyboard and speech output. They've done some fairly
major reworkings in the last couple of updates, so some
of the features that we now have are a number
(05:43):
of enhancements to the editor, which is sort of the
main note taker function of the device. The other one,
the other thing that they've done is, um, an ability
to search through menus because it is a menu driven system,
and often things might be 2 or 3 levels deep
in the menus. So you can now search for a
particular function if you wish. And there's also they've introduced
(06:09):
a way of being able to send emails. So the
device has two modes, kind of a traditional, they call
traditional mode, which is sort of replicates the old Braylon
speak from back in the 90s, and then it has
desktop mode where you can go into the Linux desktop. Now,
previously emails were done, uh, using the Thunderbird email client
(06:33):
in desktop mode. But what they've done is developed some
workarounds so that you don't have to go into desktop mode.
You can trigger a new email or reply to an
email and things like that from within traditional mode, which
is is nice, um, because it's a much more friendly
sort of interface. And you don't have to learn the,
the orca desktop screen reader. So, um, you know, as
(06:55):
we've said before on the show, they do, um, add
new features very regularly. And, uh, it is becoming quite
a capable little device.
S1 (07:04):
Now, you've been playing with an alternate device recently, the
orbit speak from Orbit Research. How does that stack up?
S2 (07:13):
That was an interesting thing. I, I saw one at
CSUN and decided I wanted it. Um, and look, they
both do different things extremely well. The orbit speak is,
I guess, the, the best way to describe it is
that the orbit speak really is kind of a pocket
note taker, rather than a pocket sort of computing device.
(07:37):
So it doesn't have, uh, you know, um, things like
the Chrome or Firefox web browsers built into it and
those sorts of things. Now, having said that, the things
that it's designed to do, it does exceptionally well. The
footprint is similar, but it's a little bit thinner than
the BT speak. And that was one of the reasons
(07:57):
I like it, because I can put it into a
man bag or a bum bag and, you know, carry
it around and it takes up less room. It just
fits in there a little bit better. It's about the
same footprint as my iPhone 15 Pro and probably a
similar thickness, to be honest. Um, it, uh, it feels
(08:18):
a little bit better in terms of finish than the
BT speak. The BT speak the plastic case has some
sort of rough edges and that kind of thing. And
the keyboard is very is a lot less rattly or clicky.
The keyboard is actually very similar to if you've seen
the orbit Reader 20 or the orbit writer. It's using
a similar eight key keyboard, but it does also have
(08:41):
a little d pad where you can go up, down, left,
and right. The advantage of that, um, in my particular
use case, I, I went shopping last week. I was
wanting to try some South African cooking and, uh, had
quite a shopping list, and it meant that I could
carry the unit in one hand and just operate the
d pad with my thumb. I had each shopping list
item on a new line. I find doing that on
(09:04):
the BT speak where you're doing chorded commands. I find
that kind of difficult one handed. Uh, obviously the reason
I'm doing it one handed is because I was being sighted,
guided around the, um, the South African grocery store. Um,
the speech, I think, is a little better. Uh, well,
not the speech. It does come standard with the vocalizer voices,
but it has one speaker, but it's a slightly bigger speaker,
(09:27):
so it seems to me to sound less tinny. Um,
it does have things like a clock, a calendar, a
contacts function, um, an alarm, you know, those sorts of things.
It's got a web, radio and a very good and
easy to use media player. So it does have some
other functions apart from the note taker. But I think,
(09:50):
you know, kind of depends what you want it for. Um,
the other thing of course, because it runs Android and
it behaves a little more like your phone in terms
of when you put it to sleep, it goes to
sleep and doesn't draw a lot of battery, whereas the
BT speak, um, it does get warm and it probably
will still be flat overnight. It just goes into a
slightly lower power consumption kind of mode. Whereas the, um,
(10:14):
orbit speak, when you put it to sleep, it, it,
it goes to sleep like your phone so you can
put it into sleep mode. Come back to it five
days later and you'll be exactly where you were, and
you won't have lost a lot of battery. So, you know,
there are like all these things. There are pros and cons,
I think, as a straight sort of portable note taker device,
kind of pen and paper replacement, if you will. The
(10:35):
orbit speak does a better job. If you want to
tinker and play with Linux and still use it with,
you know, desktop browsers and YouTube and things like that,
then the BT speak is probably the way to go.
S1 (10:47):
Tell us about the price of the orbit speak and
how it compares with BT speak.
S2 (10:52):
Uh, it is quite a bit cheaper. So the orbit
speak sells for I think, 695 US. So by the
time you convert that it probably works out at around
about $1,000. Whereas the BT speak is I think 1199 US.
(11:12):
So by the time you get it here, you're probably
looking at something in the order of a little over $2,000.
So there is a significant price difference.
S1 (11:20):
So we've been talking about the BT speak and the
orbit speak from Orbit Research. Apple dropped some software updates
last week.
S2 (11:31):
They did iOS 18.4. And they also released a sort
of a minor update for devices that are not capable
of running iOS 18, just to sort of plug some
security holes. I think there are a couple of good
features for VoiceOver users in this latest update. They have
(11:52):
a couple of additional verbosity controls now, so when you
are scrolling through content, you can elect to have it
say or not say things like heading. Uh, those kinds
of attributes. And you can also tell it whether to
speak those before or after the name of the item.
(12:13):
The other one that I was quite pleased to see was, uh,
for those who use Braille displays, there is now a
gesture which enables you to do a double tap and hold.
So a good example of where you might do this
is if you use either WhatsApp or the Apple iMessage
program to send voice messages where you want to sort
(12:36):
of tap and hold your finger on the record button.
And then when you let it go, it stops recording
and sends the message. So there's now a way to
do that, a key sequence, a chorded command using your
spacebar that you can sort of press once, which will
initiate the double tap and hold. And then you press
it again. And that that lets sort of releases the gesture. Um,
(12:57):
there's also several bug fixes. Um, and as always, a
couple of new bugs as well, I think. Um, I
haven't come across them yet. They're obviously not major ones,
I don't think, but definitely some nice improvements there in
iOS 18.4 for VoiceOver users.
S1 (13:14):
And at the same time, upgrades for watchOS and for
Mac OS and Probably tvOS, so I haven't seen much
about that yet.
S2 (13:24):
No, I haven't looked into the TV one, but definitely
the the watchOS and the Mac OS. Sequoia gets an
update as well. Yeah.
S1 (13:31):
But certainly for the iPhone and for the iPad, it's
18.4 is the new version. That's right. Before we go,
a reminder that you can find details of what we've
been talking about in this and previous editions of the
program by going to VA radio. VA. And to write
(13:54):
to the program.
S2 (13:55):
You can email me. At Vision Australia.
S1 (14:06):
At Vision Australia. This has been talking tech with me
has been Vision Australia's national access technology manager Damo McMorrow.
I'm Stephen Jolly. Stay safe. We'll talk more tech next week.
S3 (14:18):
See you.
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