Progress and new frontiers discussed at the Blind Citizens Australia Convention

Transcript

18 October 2015

Roberta: Media Access Australia's Director of Digital Accessibility, Dr Scott Hollier, recently presented on developments in accessible technology for people who are blind or vision impaired at the Blind Citizens Australia National Convention on 10 October. Welcome, Scott.

Scott: Thanks, Roberta, great to be back again.

Roberta: Now, how was the BCA Conference?

Scott: It went really, really well. There as about 120 people present and it was held in Perth, so quite a few people made the trek over west, and it was really good in terms of celebrating the progress of BCA as an organisation. There was a number of really interesting topics discussed around the future of the organisation, how to advocate for important service, the National Broadband Network and the implications of that and, yeah, my own talk looking at technologies, past, present and future. So it was a really, really good event.

Roberta: I know that one of your ones that you look at strongly is the screen readers. How have they changed over the years?

Scott: Quite a lot and one of the things I did to start my presentation was I showed one of the very early screen readers on the Commodore 64 from 1982 and the voice got a few chuckles because it's quite rough and very, you know, difficult to understand but, look, in fairness, the program has managed to fit that entire text-to-speech engine into 39 K of memory, which is like a thousandth, if you like of how things are today. So it's just been amazing to see how that has evolved from very humble beginnings and the technologies we have access to now.

Roberta: So, Scott, what accessibility features are in popular products today?

Scott: Some of the things we've talked about on this program, there is quite a variety of tools across things like Windows 10, looking at the Mac, looking at Android and looking at IOS. Some of the particular standout things at the moment on Windows 10 having that extra ability to dictate and use voice recognition to give commands to Windows, like the Cortana digital assistant that isn't technically available in Australia but if you set your language and region to UK you can get access to that. There's also things on the Android platform. We're seeing that evolve rapidly to improve accessibility for screen reader users, magnifier users, and also people with low vision and colour contrast difficulties. Of course IOS with the iPhone and the iPad just continue to go from strength to strength. So right across the board we're seeing a lot of great accessibility in popular mainstream products.

Roberta: So what things can we look forward to?

Scott: One of the things we were talking about in the presentation was that we're seeing more wearables. So we've talked about the Apple Watch but also Google Glass is looking to make a comeback for developers. That's the glasses that you can wear and have information overlaid in front of your eyes but also the benefit of glasses that you could walk into a shop, hold up a can and then the glass can actually, using optical character recognition, tell you what that is. So, you know, there's some exciting things to look forward to on that front. Also, we've looked at the Intel Vibrating Jacket. There's a jacket that was shown earlier in the year that vibrates in different places, depending on how close you're getting to objects. So there's some really clever ways that wearables are being looked at. Also the internet of things, so the ability to interact with devices around the home and the ability to use, say, an accessible smartphone to drive your washing, cook your food and things like that. So I think it's a very interesting space that there is so much going on and lots to look forward to.

Roberta: Now, how is the ABC audio description trial going, Scott?

Scott: Well, this is something that’s been very close to our hearts and also BCA have done a lot of work in this area as well. So there was a lot of discussion around the audio description trial currently on ABC iview. It's been great to see that the service has been quite well used. We've seen it rolled out on IOS devices like the iPad and also now Android devices like tablets that run Android and we're just about to see in the coming weeks that put onto the main desktop web browsing version of iview. So the fact that there are now programs available that are audio described and that that service is growing and it is being quite well used is something that we've found really exciting and it’s just wonderful that things are changing in a way where that's improving. We've also noticed that services like Netflix have increased their audio described content and it's a little bit around on the iTunes and other countries like New Zealand and Thailand have done a lot of work in this space, so, yeah, I think it is getting better but there's still a fair bit to do.

Roberta: Well, thank you for all of that today and I'm very glad that you're able to do that report from the Blind Citizens Australia National Convention which was held just recently.

Scott: Thanks, Roberta, great to be back on the show again.

Roberta: I've been speaking with Media Access Australia's Director of Digital Accessibility, Dr Scott Hollier. For more information on accessible technology you can call Media Access Australia on 02 9212 6242 or email info@mediaaccess.org.au. Media Access Australia is a supporter of this program.

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