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CES: The future of home electronics
Transcript
2 February 2014
Roberta: The Consumer Electronic Show has just been held in Las Vegas. The event was jam packed with the latest gadgets and many have exciting benefits for people who are blind or vision impaired. Dr Scott Hollier, project manager at Media Access Australia, is here to tempt us. Welcome Scott.
Scott: Thanks Roberta, great to be back again.
Roberta: Now what is the Consumer Electronic Show?
Scott: Well as you said in your introduction the CES, it’s the world’s biggest consumer electronic show, so anything that’s new from the major companies, like Panasonic, Sony, all the big names, they display their new products for the year. So we see things like TVs and tablets and gadgets and just yeah, all variety of things and it’s just basically massive.
Roberta: However, are there new accessible products there, did you find out?
Scott: Well it’s a great question and there have been quite a number of new product categories and there are some really interesting accessibility implications as a result. But one of the first ones is around the smart home. So we’ve seen some new devices like fridges and washing machines that can actually talk to us and tell us how far through the spin cycle they are, you can even send them SMSs to some of these products and they will send you messages back, telling you how they’re going with things. Or the fridge might tell you when it’s running out of soft drink. So that’s something which is really interesting and because you can have that extra interface there’s some accessibility options there.
The really big news though in terms of where technology is going is around wearable technology. So we saw some releases of things last year, like Samsung released a smart watch that is kind of a cross between a phone and a watch that you can wear on your wrist. That seems to be a very popular category this year with lots of other companies releasing new smart watches and things like that, so that’s a big trend.
We’ve also seen smart TVs. A lot of TVs on the market at the moment do have internet facilities but they’ve always been a bit tricky to use. So we’ve seen a real simplification of those in the new models of TVs coming out this year.
Another category that’s really interesting is a push in the area of gaming. So there was a really big gaming focus and one of the really big ones is called the Play Station Now and it’s by Sony. It’s like their Play Station console but what makes this a bit different is that it just runs off a TV, so you don’t actually need a Play Station to play Play Station games, it just streams the game off the internet. There’s a few other Android based cheap games consoles. So gaming is getting a real focus.
Probably the last big thing is around new Android tablets. So we’re seeing again the Android operating system getting a really big push this year and there’s lots of new products around there. So given that Android has some good accessibility features there’s lots of potential for these new categories to have accessibility options.
Roberta: Well Android seems to be on the ball because I was talking to Eliza last week and she was telling me about the Stop Announcer that you’ve got in Perth.
Scott: Yes, well the app is fantastic and what the app allows people to do is to hop on the bus, it then counts down stops and then lets you know when you’re getting off, which is useful to people who are blind and vision impaired but also useful if people happen to doze off on the bus or something like that, you get an alarm telling you you’ve reached your stop. So Android really is gaining in popularity.
Roberta: Well Eliza was saying it’s only in Perth at the moment but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be everywhere else. So when we will see these devices that you were talking about, and the gadgets, in our shops?
Scott: Well that is the question. Following very closely these type of gadgets I’m salivating at the idea that some of these things will be on the market soon. As with many things with CES, during the course of the year we will see these products. Most of the products will be released in shops. Some of them are proof of concept, so we don’t see everything from CES turn up in the shops but most of the things we’ve just run through will turn up in the shops during the year. Sometimes these things can be a little expensive.
Roberta: When they first come out.
Scott: Yeah. I think there’s some very exciting things around the corner and I do like the idea, especially with gaming where some of the consoles are becoming a lot cheaper or maybe can even just be streamed over your TV without needing a console. So some of these things really shake up the landscape a bit. I have a smart TV at home that’s very difficult to use and so the idea of that interface being simplified and perhaps even accessible in the future will be great.
Roberta: Now Scott, Apple don’t participate in CES, is there anything from them that we can look forward to this year?
Scott: Well one of the things with the CES is it does give us a clue as to what the trends are and Apple doesn’t participate in the CES because they generally like to do their own thing. But the name iWatch has been registered in many countries last year and so I think it’s highly likely that this wearable technology trend we’re seeing, I would be very surprised if Apple didn’t release their own smart watch at some point during this year. Apple have also expressed interest in not just having their Apple TV device, which is a set top box that can do great things, but they’re looking at also building their own actual TV. So there’s a few things, all rumours at the moment but yeah, I think it’s quite likely we’ll see some similar products from Apple.
Roberta: Well that’s really good, thank you for that. We’ve been speaking with Dr Scott Hollier, who works on all these related to accessible websites and technology. For more information about devices that can help you, visit Media Access Australia website, mediaaccess.org.au or call the team on 02) 9212 6242. Media Access Australia is a supporter of this program.