Ebu Access Cast 18
Jan 27, 2020
Welcome to the 18th EBU Access Cast!
Since this is the first podcast for 2020, we wish you all the best in 2020 from the whole team, and we hope that you will get some nice new gadgets which will expand and improve your daily Living.
We also made some improvements in our podcast since 2020, and that means from now on our podcast supports chapters Section, which means that if you want to listen something that specifically interests you, you can directly skip to your favorite chapter in your favorite podcast Player. The chapters do not work directly if you are listening the podcast from the web Player, therefore this is another reason why it is better to subscribe to our podcast directly from the podcast players such as Apple podcasts on iPhone or Podcast adict on Android platform.
Now let’s jump into the news Section to see what we have prepared for you:
This year CES 2020 was occupied by many more assistive technology vendors than on the previous CES events, which is absolutely a positive sign. Therefore we selected a few of the most interesting products which were shown for general public:
First Braille tablet shown at CES 2020
While we don’t have too much technical information about the Tactile Pro, it is great to see that such devices are slowly getting into the mainstream and that braille as the most important form of written form for blind people is being updated into new device.
Hap2Phone Allows Users to Feel Objects in Photos on Their Touchscreens
Hap2U, a haptics developer specialized in integrating sensory intelligence into tactile surfaces, will unveil Hap2Phone, the world’s first haptic smartphone display, at CES 2020. While this device isn’t made for the end consumers, the concept of such a device might be very interesting for System integrators and OEM manufacturers.
OrCam Announces New AI Hearing Device and Handheld AI Reader at CES 2020
OrCam is a known vendor from Israel. This time they decided to expand their product line towards the users with Hearing and reading problems with 2 new products. We don’t know what the price of the products will be yet, however this does not mean that you should not visit their Stand on the upcoming assistive tech events such as the Sight City 2020 where you can try their products directly.
W3C Launches an Introduction to Web Accessibility Free Online Course in Cooperation with UNESCO IITE
On the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (UNESCO IITE) announced the launch of the online course built on the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) open curricula with international expert trainers from W3C Member organizations.
[The MOOC begins on January 20, 2020.]
How to make museums more accessible for disabled people? Ask them
The Arches project took place in 6 different museums across Europe for the last 3 years and they came up with really interesting results which Pawel represented to us in the podcast.
This time we prepared really cool news for visually impaired musicians:
Building Raspberry Pi Smart Guitar for Blind, Deaf and Mute Musicians
This really cool Instrument combines various tech solutions built into one device, allowing the users with seeing, Hearing or speech problems to use it as they wish. The users can choose to receive the information via built in small Display, read the information via built in braille Display or choose the built in buttons for going through the menus in the guitar, in case the users have speech problems which they can read thru the built in Display or hear it thru the built in Speaker.
Musicians who are visually impaired finally can get really excited, because Sibelius will become much more accessible for Jaws, NVDA and Voice over users in the near future. That means that the Level of integration will be much improved for students and musicians who need to utilize Sibelius for composing on the daily bases. For many years visually impaired community was struggling with accessibility of Sibelius which is in todays world one of the main tools used for composing and arranging, and it looks like that this will finally change.
VIEWS International published the results of the VIPTech project, and Bart gave us more info about it.
EUROPEAN DISABILITY FORUM AND ORACLE E-ACCESSIBILITY SCHOLARSHIP 2019-2020
If you are Student who is studding IT related subjects and if you are visually impaired you may want to apply to the following scolaireship till March 6th.
If your organisation is envolved with Braille literacy but you think that you are in need for a new braille printer you can apply to the following donation program and see if you wil be one of the winners.
Applications are now open for the 2020 Holman Prize
If you think that you are the next inventor who will change the future in our community, apply to the Holman Prize and get 25000 dollars. 2019 Holman Prize winner Yuma Decaux software engeneer, specialist in 3d and mixed media
creating an app to enable blind citizen scientists to participate in the search for exoplanets by listening to space.
Google Assistant Now Has Interpreter Mode on Android and iOS Devices
We checked live in the podcast if the feature Works for the smartphones, and the result was very positive. Than we also checked if the same feature is available on the Android smartwatches, but weren’t sucsessful in getting it to work. That means that the smartwatch users will have to wäit a bit longer untill the interpretor arrives.
However we were able to talk about another cool feature which allows all the users of Google Assistant to check their local air quality. IN order to activate it, just say “Talk to Air Quality Index”. After that the assistant will ask you for your location permmition, and after a few seconds you will get the results from the closest air quality measuring station.
The last information for today Comes from Pawel who presented to us Z5NBY RetroArch 1.8.2 – Accessibility features for blind people. If you are a blind Gamer who likes the old style games like a final Fantasy this will be a great news for you, since you are able to play the game which you could not do it before.
As always, we are here for you on our Twitter and e-mail so give us a Feedback about the last Episode, and we are looking forward to be back with you in February.