COOL BLIND TECH

YOUR SOURCE FOR THE BEST ASSISTIVE TECH NEWS, REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS FROM TOP BLIND AND LOW VISION EXPERTS. AN ENTERTAINING AND TRUSTWORTHY DISCUSSION ON EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

Tamas Geczy

Microsoft Releases Ear Hockey, a garage project with potential in advancing the audiogaming future

2018 has certainly been the great year we all cracked it up to being, and it took us one step closer to seeing integration between the mainstream and the more niche gaming markets. The XBOX Adaptive controller released this year and I have seen more and more discussions around ways the blind can play conventional video games.

Microsoft is taking this one more step further in 2018, and I do wonder how much this is just a sign of the times changing as we move forward towards ever greater integration. Sure, it’s a garage project, something they put together with an intended goal. However I must also remind you that some of our greatest tools (like Soundscape or Seeing AI) started out as these smaller-scale projects which later culminated into what we know today. read more

Demystifying the codecs of Bluetooth, to get the wireless sound you want: a primer

It’s the holiday season, the time where most revolutionize their tech atmosphere with new devices sporting fresh batteries and some of the latest advancements to be had. Maybe you finally got that Android or Apple accessory, that shiny one you have held out for to have all year long. If it was a Bluetooth headphone of some kind, then you have come to the right article to read.

Introduction

You see, Apple removed the headphone jack in the iPhone 7, followed in suit by many other Android manufacturers there after. Thus began a new avalanche. The money mudslide of the decade, where Bluetooth headphone sales probably exploded, fueled by the ever-greater selection of cheaper models now available to the consumer. These headphones generally use a technology with Bluetooth 4.0+, and provide anywhere from 6 hours (for earbuds and smaller accessories) to 15-40 hours (for on-ear or around-ear designs.) By far, Bluetooth 4 gave us something needed badly in wireless headsets: Lower-powered designs which take 10-15 minutes to recharge a few hours of operation at minimum. A typical headphone (like the Bose SoundLink on-ear, the first one in 2014 to slowly begin this trend) utilize a 4-500MAH battery for the 20 hours of playback it gets. Even noise canceling models such as the Sennheiser Hd4.50 pair provide >20 hours of ANC (active-noise-control) in parallel to Bluetooth use on 600 MAH, a battery no larger than found in a single household AAA battery. Remarkable, but it’s technology. read more

Reviewing the QwerkyWriter Mechanical Keyboard: A Little Qwerky, but way Better than Qwerty!

Dive into this podcast to learn about the Qwerky Writer Mechanical Keyboard, a keyboard dedicated to those who want the greatest typewriter feeling under their fingertips at all times. Thanks to arrangements done by Qwerkytoys, what’s reviewed here is of the latest QwerkyWriter S model.
As you can hear, I could not be more than pleased with the design, build, and overall retro feel of this product. As you also hear, there are some some negatives, such as the right-shift key, but these to me have not detracted from using the device at all. While you can pick up another keyboard claiming a typewriter feel, I truly challenge you in these three qualities produced by the breadth of attention put in by the QwerkyWriter team. read more

April showers bring updates from the Redmond towers! Reviewing the Windows 10 April update

Introduction

With another year, comes another update. Having re-written this section of the review multiple times now feels just the same as the world felt when the April update slipped it’s April 10th release schedule date. Oh, that faithful Patch Tuesday, now come and gone. Nobody really knew what caused the update to slip a full 20 days, but it was most likely for the right reasons. Twice when installing the so called released build, 17133, my humble Lenovo Ultrabook machine randomly rebooted the update from the beginning – prompting me to retry each time. Something didn’t feel quite right. read more

(updated) If you are a legally blind screen reader user in the US, Microsoft seeks your captioning advice for pay

With the recent AI developments around captioning and auto-generated text at Microsoft, its no wonder that the platform is always going through improvement. Through next Friday the 4th of August, Microsoft research is actively collecting data for a 15-minute survey which will help it in understanding the types of captions users wish to hear on images. You may recall that a while ago, a similar survey ran where sample images were asked for bias and quality. If you loved that survey, you will no doubt love this one, too! The best part? There’s a $15 gift card from Amazon as gratuity for taking it. If you are legally blind, above the age of 18 and use any screen reader on a regular basis to read text with, you qualify. read more

Artificial Intelligence and Text Recognition unite in Microsoft’s Seeing Ai iPhone App

Not a month has gone by since We posted an article on Narrator including AI-driven image tags and Microsoft is back at it yet again, though with an older project which finally has made public fruition. Introduced at Build 2016, this project had a goal of bringing powerful image recognition technology which could be used to augment every day life, especially when combined with the power of the cloud.

Today, The app is available in the iOS app store in the United States, Canada, India, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Singapore, for free. read more

How to find a good Apple Watch band which suits your style and doesn’t break the bank

I have been an advocate of the wearable market within my own life, even though market trends would indicate otherwise as of late. Recently, some wearable companies have gone under; Many would say that at the present time, The Apple Watch has created its own category and largely became a device which is to rival others such as Fitbit, although not quite in the same category as these other devices currently are. As an example, the Apple Watch acts more as an “iPhone-only companion” whereas Fitbit generally works better on Android, where the platform suffers from less restricted functionalities to developers. read more

Now Available In Narrator! AI-tagged Image Descriptions

If there was a word which is to define the era that dominates this early 21st century, it no doubt would be the cloud. Everything has moved to incorporating some cloud-based feature or another. Whilst screen reading has done OCR and other image recognition prior, this too was relegated to locally performed magic, rather than anything that used the cloud to process data. The rise of huge AI clusters which now can process trillions of calculations a second has created a better opportunity for so much more to be off-loaded to these systems. read more

The 6-dot Braille Label Maker makes labeling for everyone fun!

There are only a few ways people can create Braille labels these days. One could use a $500-1000 Perkins Brailler and feed the tape into it, after which you cut it yourself per label. There are other handheld labeling devices sold which provide a stamping mechanism for labels; These take time and require rotating the disc after each strike. Not convenient.

Logan Tech’s Label Maker solves this problem quite well by offering a solution even those with sight could integrate with. In this case, the device allows for a qwerty keyboard to be hooked up over micro-USB, providing labeling as well. read more

Window-eyes users, you have another choice with NVDA

The conversation solidifies. As reported previously, Window-Eyes, perhaps the third-most popular screen reader in the blindness community, is no more. At the time, Freedom Scientific (now part of the VFO group) published their guide to switching to JAWS as part of their offer.

After publishing the article, many reached out regarding NVDA, and some felt that to them, NVDA may be a more natural transition to another screen reader, or at least when compared to JAWS. Window-eyes has a “synth ring,” and some of the mouse commands for clicking may be easier to understand if you use NVDA, as commands do overlap. Best of all, it’s open-source, meaning that the project will be harder to abandon as others from the community would step up in a heartbeat if the developers felt they needed to work on anything else. Bhavya Shah spoke to Mick and Jamie during NVDA Con about the possibility of any further fears relating to this where they assured everyone that the independent spirit of NVDA’s development will always stay alive. By nature, the organization was set up so that its assets (specifically NVDA at least) could not become intellectual property. read more

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