SIGHT AND SOUND TECHNOLOGY

PODCAST EPISODE 72

Stuart Lawler: Hello and welcome in to the Sight and Sound Technology podcast. My name is Stuart Lawler and this is episode number 72.

Stuart Lawler: It does have that summer feel, doesn’t it? I hope, wherever you’re listening, that you’re enjoying a bit of heat. We’re getting a few heavy showers here on the east coast of Ireland, but certainly humid there, and when the sun comes out, it’s just amazing. Now, podcast@sightandsound.co.uk is the email address, if you’d like to get in touch with us. We always love to hear from you. And coming up on today’s show, we’re continuing our Sight Village countdown with a long overdue catch-up with Jenny Axler from HIMS. Stay right where you are.

Stuart Lawler: Well, as I said, we’re continuing our countdown to Sight Village Central. I think there’s about four weeks to go at time of recording. I’m looking forward to heading to Birmingham along with lots of my colleagues from Sight and Sound Technology and we’re really, really looking forward to just catching up with users and finding out how people are getting on with all the technology that we sell, support, train on, and are passionate about, none more so than the HIMS product line. I remember coming into this company and just being so amazed at how responsive HIMS are to everything that we request and to their users and how committed they are to their users. The person who really drives so much of that for us and one of our key contacts at HIMS is the wonderful Jenny Axler, who is really long overdue a space on the show, I think. So, I’m very, very happy that Jenny’s back with us. Jenny, great to have you and welcome back to the show.

Jenny Axler: Thanks. It’s always great to be here and it’s an extremely exciting summer for us, so I’m really excited to be here this time.

Stuart Lawler: Yes, you’re going to be very busy, aren’t you? You’re heading to the States, I know, in a couple of days. There are big exhibitions in the States with ACB and NFB. We have Sight Village. And I think there are other things that you’re involved with. Just before we talk about BrailleSense 6 and there are some great promotions coming up as part of Sight Village with the HIMS product line, just tell us, the last year, because you’ve brought a new product to market, I sense it’s been a bit manic for you.

Jenny Axler: It’s been really fun. This is actually the time when I love my job the most, when our products almost sell themselves, because they’re that fantastic. I do think the SensePlayer is fantastic. I do know that people who bought it right out of the box, they found issues with it, but the thing that I’m seeing and why I’m so pumped about it and even Stuart, he works with our beta 2 as well, is that we’re seeing a lot of this feedback that we received being addressed right now, in the current upgrade, in beta. We have a really great beta team that’s giving us a lot of feedback and is echoing a lot of what we heard from the general market. So, we’re actually seeing so much of it, in addition to, of course, adding the mobile screen reader, so now you’re going to be able to use apps like Audible. Stuart, what do you use on the SensePlayer?

Stuart Lawler: I’ve been using Audible. I’ve been using the Amazon App Store, which I didn’t really know existed, but I was able to install my Amazon apps from there. If you’ve been using the BrailleSense 6 or even the Polaris, you get that comfortable Android feel, something very similar to that. We’re looking forward to seeing how that product matures over the next couple of months and really looking forward to showing that to people in Sight Village. I’m sorry that you can’t be with us in Sight Village, Jenny, but maybe next year.

Jenny Axler: I know. I wish I could. I’ll be just arriving back from the States after a two week trip. I do want to say, about the mobile screen reader though, it is a little bit different feeling on the SensePlayer, because you have the different layout. If you’re using the Polaris, this is going to be a lot faster, of course. It is very responsive. I was really surprised about that. But you also have that top and bottom navigation, that page up and down navigation. It is a newer version of Android, so things are a little bit better. A screen reader is used to using the touch screen, the up and down, the left and right, the layout, and being able to use the arrow keys. There’s something about it that’s almost more intuitive and especially with media, we do have the global media controls, the Android media controls for things like Audible and Siri and Apple Music and all those things. So, there is a different feel, I feel. It’s going to be familiar to those who use the BrailleSense but the SensePlayer is going to seem more like a media device, because that’s what it’s meant to be, and even with third-party apps, I think it still feels like that.

Stuart Lawler: Alright. Just before we go off the SensePlayer and we will then talk all about BrailleSense 6, I thought it might be worth talking about Smart Connect, Jenny, for anyone who maybe doesn’t know about it. I think this is probably the most exciting feature on this device, in my view. I don’t know who thought of it, maybe it was yourself. Do you want to just tell us what it is?

Jenny Axler: Smart Connect allows you to use your SensePlayer as a tactile keyboard for an Android or iOS device. So, that can be an iPad or an iPhone or an Android tablet or a Galaxy phone, or whatever it might be. I really ended up liking this. Again, I love being able to go to the top and bottom and even on the lock screen, being able to jump down to that unlock button. There’s something that’s just so much more efficient about doing this and it even works with your BrailleSense. You might say, but why? Somebody talked about being in a hotel room and his BrailleSense charging and being able to still operate it from across the room, with a little remote control. I do the same thing with my iPhone and media. I have a Lightning dock that connects to my stereo speakers and I will now use my SensePlayer from across the room to control Apple Music or whatever, and, again, it’s got the global media controls, so I can just use next track, next track and use Apple Music. Granted, you’ll be able to do that directly on the player and use Bluetooth as well and some people might say, why do you need both? I think it just depends on your case. I think some people will probably prefer to use the apps themselves. But some people may prefer to use their apps on their phone if they feel like it works better and faster. When we came up with this, we were not planning to put a mobile screen reader in it. That’s one reason why we came up with it. But I do like it. I think it is a more efficient way, a lot of times, to operate your phone, to get you there faster, while still having that mobile feel to it in a way that maybe a braille display doesn’t, because it is a handheld. It feels still sort of phone-ish in your hand and the way that it operates.

Stuart Lawler: I was feeling very retro when I was playing with this first, using WhatsApp, with the T9 on the SensePlayer, like it was on Nokia phone. There’s something kind of nice and old-fashioned about that, isn’t there?

Jenny Axler: There is a little bit. It is a little bit old school, but I’m one of those people who enjoys that sometimes and I use my touch screens all the time. I realise that I have five or six touch screen devices that I use relatively often, so it’s not that I can’t. I think a lot of people have this idea that, if you use these specialised devices, it means that you are somehow less technical and I just don’t buy that, not at all. There are times when it’s just more efficient. For me, that’s what it is, whether we’re taking about the BrailleSense or the SensePlayer, it’s about getting things done. I don’t have a lot of patience, I won’t lie. A lot of times, this just gets me there faster, helps me multitask faster, because you’re not having to explore a screen. A lot of times, you just know what to do. If you want to pause your media or go to your next track, so you can generally pause with the two-finger double-tap, but if you want to go to the next track, you have to get into your lock screen and usually locate it. Sometimes you can put your finger on it, but you don’t always. With this, you always just press a button and, boom, there’s never any second-guessing. It just happens. I have to admit, I like that. So, to me, it has nothing to do with being less technical. I’m an absolute believer in having many tools in my toolbox and I have many tools in my toolbox and there are times when I like using a touch screen but there are many times when I really like that tactile keyboard.

Stuart Lawler: I think it’s all about whatever works for the individual and I definitely recommend checking it out, if people are coming to Sight Village, and if you’re not coming to Sight Village and you want to see the SensePlayer, then do, by all means, give us a shout. Now, Jenny, we did want to talk about the BrailleSense 6 and I suppose the most exciting piece of news, and I think you can officially reveal it for us: an Android update is coming, a big Android update as well.

Jenny Axler: Yes, we’re jumping from 10 to 12. I was just saying to Stuart, this is of course not the newest version of Android, but part of it is that, with these devices, it does take a little bit longer to develop them and so we started developing this four years ago, so the platform that we’re using, this is where we can go with it. However I think we are actually the first Android note-taker to provide an OS update, let alone going two OS versions up. That’s one thing. The second thing is that even with Android 12, this is going to give us a lot more longevity, so even if you purchase the BrailleSense 6 now, you know you’re going to have several years of updates. Remember, too, that with Android, especially the later versions, we can update packages. Even if we can’t update the entire OS, there are a lot of packages that we can update, which, again, is just going to continue this longevity of this device, in a way that we couldn’t do with Polaris and I don’t think that any other braille Android device has yet done. So, it does. It makes sure that you have more longevity. In addition, I can see improvements in accessibility, again, the responsiveness, the amount of controls that are accessible. I can use the same apps on an Android 12 update and my Android 10 and I can see differences and how they work better and more smoothly. We’ve also got a few more apps. We are finally, yes, really going to redo the web browser and, again, much more responsive, much more modern. We’ve cleaned up the UI a little bit to make it more intuitive, but, yet, it’s still that BrailleSense interface that you know and love and that’s easy for you, so it doesn’t force you to use Chrome or Edge, but you do have additional navigation that you didn’t have in the old browser, as well as the ability to, for example, press Enter on a video link and have it open in YouTube, or, again, press Enter on something and have it open your Zoom meeting. You can do that directly now from our browser, instead of having to use Chrome or Edge or something like that. So, that, I think, is going to be huge for a lot of people. The browser might actually be even more exciting than the OS upgrade. You won’t necessarily feel the OS upgrade too much, other than just some additional smoothness. I think the performance has improved and other beta testers have commented on that as well, that they feel like that. What else is going on? I think we’ll be showing this in the US, so I think I can talk about this too. We also have a To-Do app, which I think will be a great addition to the Organiser menu. And we’re bringing the games back.

Stuart Lawler: I was delighted to see the games back, the brain game, a lot of those are coming back. I love them.

Jenny Axler: Yes, especially the maths games for education. I know a lot of schools liked those and we had a request to bring those back. We probably should add to it, but so far we are just bringing the old ones, so those are coming back too with this upgrade.

Stuart Lawler: Delighted to see them coming back. I wanted to just maybe mention two things that happened during the year, which I was really impressed with the responsiveness from your end and maybe just ask you to talk about them briefly. That was the changes from the side of Google and Microsoft around how they access email. So, the email apps on BrailleSense 6 had challenges getting into Google email, I think, around this time last year and then Microsoft Office 365 a little bit later on in the year and you had to respond to that pretty fast. What’s that like when you have a lot of users who rely on this every day, getting very concerned and anxious and you guys did it?

Jenny Axler: We did. I will say that Microsoft didn’t happen quite as quickly as we would have liked. Unfortunately it takes a lot of rewriting of code to sometimes do that. Microsoft was a little bit harder to figure out than Google. Google was a little bit more straightforward for what we needed to do with it. We were able to get that in under the deadline. Microsoft, we did end up having to wait for it and I can only sincerely apologise for it, because I know that in schools that caused some issues. It should be usable now. I really hope that no-one is still having issues with it. But it can be difficult at times. We have a very small development team that’s working on multiple products and they have a schedule and all of a sudden, something like this comes in and it’s actually a major project, so that is the difficulty. We can’t say, oh, it’s okay, we can just put these different protocols in. It actually might take a month or two to even work on it and that’s just for one developer and we’ve only got four. Unfortunately that can sometimes throw a wrench in things and we don’t always get things done as quickly as we wish we could. Please know, it’s not because we’re ignoring the problem or that we don’t recognise the severity of the problem. We really try to do what we can and, for those people who have SensePlayers or who have been listening to podcasts and things where it’s been discussed, I think you’re going to really see that with the SensePlayer update. You’re going to see a lot of feedback based on things that you have heard. You’ll see that we do respond to it and we do try our best. We don’t always succeed the way that we would like to do it, but we intend to do everything we can and we always try to.

Stuart Lawler: Okay. Of course, if people have feedback, you can get in touch with us at Sight and Sound or you can contact HIMS as well if you wish. We’re always happy to receive that feedback. Jenny, it’s always great to chat to you. I know you have a busy couple of weeks ahead. Will you get to catch up with family when you’re back in the States?

Jenny Axler: I do. I go see my family first and then I’m off to Chicago for the ACB conference, where I’ll get to present all of this to America, as well as see what else is going on in the industry and the world, so I’m really excited.

Stuart Lawler: It is always interesting to catch up with other people in the industry and, as you say, find out what they’re doing and I think there is a time when all these people catch up from all sides of the assistive technology industry, whatever you might be working on. You normally get to have a catch-up with some people as well.

Jenny Axler: You do. At the end of the day, I’m a user.

Stuart Lawler: Yes, exactly.

Jenny Axler: I think, not only does that make it exciting for me in terms of seeing what’s going on in the world, but also I say that to your users as well, that so many of us here are actually users of the products, so, again, we really do try to do what we can to make these usable for you, because it also means they’re usable for us.

Stuart Lawler: Brilliant. Jenny, safe travels. It’s always great to have you on the show. Come back and see us soon and thank you for all that you and your colleagues in Selvas continue to do to make the BrailleSense 6 and, now, the SensePlayer, the great products that they are and thanks for all the work over the last many years. Long may it continue. We’ll talk to you soon.

Jenny Axler: Alright, thank you as well and have a great show.

Stuart Lawler: Many thanks to Jenny Axler. I always enjoy catching up with Jenny and in one sense, we could have talked for ages, to be honest with you, because we had so much to catch up on, but a new version of Android on the BrailleSense 6, updates to the SensePlayer, and a new web browser. I know there’s loads of people who will be listening to that, saying, “Oh, my goodness.” The new web browser on the BrailleSense 6 is definitely something that people are going to be excited about. Now, quick reminder, of course, if you are coming to Sight Village, 17th and 18th July, 10am to 4pm on the 17th, and 9:30am to 3pm on the 18th. We can’t wait to see everybody there and more podcasts to come though before Sight Village, because we’ll be continuing our Sight Village countdown. Envision, the great guys from Envision are going to be talking to me very, very soon. I can’t wait to catch up with Vanessa from Envision to talk about their cool tech. Until then, though, from Stuart Lawler, look after yourselves, take care, enjoy the fine weather, and see you soon. From everybody at Sight and Sound Technology, this is Stuart Lawler saying goodbye.