[access-uk] Re: (BrailleSense)Re: Re: Sight Village - my review

Well, that's where the competition is coming in useful. The Braillesense will be cheaper than any of the humanware range with braille displays and comes in between the pacmate 18 and 32 cell versions. It will surely force prices down, which can only be a good thing. I'm more likely to pay that sort of money for a tiny laptop and get a Brailliant or however you spell it with Window Eyes bundled, which should come in about the same price, but I do like the look of the braille sense.

Cheers
Dave

----- Original Message ----- From: "Ray's Home" <rays-home@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 1:22 PM
Subject: [access-uk] Re: (BrailleSense)Re: Re: Sight Village - my review


To add to Graham's post regarding Braille notetakers, it is indeed a minority in a minority market.

I hope there is room for more than one of these though. I always hope that a degree of healthy competition is good. When any company gets a large share of the market then abuses surely set in around pricing, support, or lack of it, and sometimes derisory trade-in prices for hardware that's out of date.

Its worth saying that many of such devices go to ATW funded people where the sort of prices that can be charged - and got away with - go unnoticed and too often uncommented on. Its individual buyers, if they afford to buy such things out of their own pockets, who are the losers in such a situation.
Ray

Personal emails:  Email me at
mailto:ray-48@xxxxxxxx

----- Original Message ----- From: "Graham Page" <gpage@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


Hi adrian. I have come to this list a little late so maybe this has already
been made clear but do we have distributors in the UK for the Optilec
easyLink and the Braillesense notetakers?

this is something we certainly need to watch though I am not sure how much
room for real competition there really is in the notetaker arena
particularly at the expensive end consisting of devices with Braille
displays.

Many worthy attempts have come and seemingly gone.  what was that device
called sold by Professional Vision Services that had a Braille display and
wirked on the Linux Opperating system?

I think that generally a product has to either work when it is first or,
like the PAC Mate, it can be released full of bugs but it can be ground
breaking, or marketed as such, and so get away with it.  I should say at
this point that, from what I can gather, the PacMate is quite stable now.

Cheers

Graham



Graham Page

Mobile: 07753 607980
Fax: 0870 706 2773
Email: gpage@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
MSN: gabriel_mcbird@xxxxxxxxxxx
Skype: gabriel_mcbird
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ray's Home" <rays-home@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 4:42 PM
Subject: [access-uk] (BrailleSense)Re: Re: Sight Village - my review


Another useful SV review. Pity that Adrian didn't stop long enough to look
at the BrailleSense properly, beyond its appearance. That is surely quite a
subjective thing. Don't know that I am impressed or much taken with the
appearance of any of the Braille notetakers! This one is certainly no
worse.

For a start, it runs under Windows 2003. For another thing, the Braille
output is good. It has excellent audio facilities too.Uniquely, as far as I
am aware, it has the little LCD display which to be frank is too small
really, but would allow, I daresay, a sighted person to take, say, a phone
number straight off it once (you) had found it. Also, though, it has video
output for a monitor. Many blind people's reaction will be, "I don't need
that", and 'It puts the price up.' Etc, etc.

A little imagination would tell you though that using such a device in a
mixed environment, such as education for example, would certainly be an
advantage.  Not all blind people inhabit an exclusively blind world.

As for the price, it might just be competitive as far as these things go, if
the usual currency conversion handicap doesn't kick in that is. So I'd say
all the more reason to consider it alongside the Mpower. Either of these
has to be a better alt than the FS offering.
Ray

Personal emails:  Email me at
mailto:ray-48@xxxxxxxx

----- Original Message ----- From: "Adrian Higginbotham" <adrian.higginbotham@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2005 3:23 PM
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Sight Village - my review


Cheers for that andrew, and for comments from others.

I made it along on Thursday and here's some thoughts and comments on
specific products.

What was particularly noticeable this year is that there are 3 very
different approaches to provision emerging each which balance ease of use
and cost in different proportions. The easiest most powerful and flexible
products on offer are the most specialised and the most expensive. The
opposite is products which offer access to mainstream products and these
tend to be the lowest cost solutions. In the middle and this is the area
which is pretty new is specialist add-ons to highstreet products which
introduce ease of use at a lower cost. These type of division can bee seen
in various product types, mobile phones, PDAs, and to some degree screen
readers.

Mobile phones:
Vodafone seem to be virtually giving away Talks if you buy it from them
including via any highstreet Vodafone store for exampel you can get a nokia
6600 on a pay as you go contract including Talks for £130. Talks is a
screenreader allowing access to whatever features are on the given handset
thus in the first of those categories identified above.

The most specialist offering inthis arena is the Oacis available from RNIB
and the middle ground products are those such as mobile speak, e.g a
proprietory solution installed on a highstreet handset but which only allows
access to the softwares own features.

Note takers - andrew as you say, this is probably the area of most
development in recent years and looks likely to be so for a while to come.

Dolphin are continuing to work on Pocket Hal, a screen reader for PDAs which
use the Pocket PC operating system. It's still in private beta with no date
as to when it will be on sale and there are still a few real fundamental
problems to get over such as if the hoste PDAs battery runs flat the
screenreader will need to be re installed when the machine is re charged and
switched back on. This can be done via the PC so doesn't necessarily require
sighted assistance although when the PDA is switched on the display has to
be set-up which does require use of the touch screen and may be something
which can only be done with sighted assistance although this isn't yet a
finished product so we'll have to wait and see. Like other touch screen
devices this one is dependant on text in via a bluetooth keyboard and voice
output. The touch screen isn't disabled but rather is rendered difficult to
accidently disturb by filling the active area with the screenreader
application window which i
s touch insensative. The logic been that if 95% of the screen is the pocket
hal window which doesn't respond to touch you are unlikely to cause any
unintended action by accidently touching the screen. If you do one feature
of pocket Hal is an alt tab like app switching function that can get you
back to where you wanted to be.

In specialist offerings, the new Braillenote mPower is basicly the latest
update to Braillenote with anew name. some useful new features but basicly
in the same old box. Interesting but not all that exciting. Personally I'm
not a fan of braillenote or paqmate as they're all too big and ugly and use
proprietory software which you need to learn too many new keystrokes to be
able to use effectively. The Braillenote PK range is basicly the
braillenote in a smaller package which I find more flexible and attractive
but still not quite enough to make me want to buy it. Not yet anyway.

The HIMs note taker, I think that's the one called Braille sense but might
be confusing 2 different products I thought was the most plasticky bulky
ugly "special needs" product I've seen in a long time and I didn't wait
around long enough for a demo of what it can do.

New, to me at least was the caretek nanno notetaker which is smaller in size
than a bar of chocolate all be it lindt chocolate which is considerably
larger than something like say a yorky or galaxy. No bells and wistles
here, notes input via the braille keyboard are stored as plane text (txt)
files and transferred to the pc by a hardwire connection I think serial
although certainly it wasn't the 32 pin variety. The unit can also be used
to record voice notes which too can be transferred to the pc. Output is
audio, synthetic for navigation keyboard echo etc and also playback of audio
notes. Memory is farely limited with I think 8mb of onboard memory and no
support for additional memory but for around £300 it's an excellent pocket
sized instant on device.

Optilec easyLink note taker is another offering for highstreet PDAs but this
one is a proprietory package e.g it allows you access to the function built
in to itself not the features of the hoste PDA. Input is via the braille
bluetooth keyboard and output is audio. Similar issue to pocket hal above
although the PDA used in the demo had a flip lid over the touch screen so
less of an issue there. The software isn't infact installed on the PDA
itself but rather auto runs from a memory card so that issue too is
by-assed. Up side is it's more stable. Down side is that is is more
proprietory so has some limits of functionality for example it can't send
out email even if the PDA allows it, it can only sync messages with outlook
on the desktop machine from where they can be sent. Software on the memory
card and back-up on CD with bluetooth braille keyboard and mains charger is
I think around £600. plus PDA of course.

Other:

Voice Over, the screen reader and magnifier for the Mac which comes built in
to the latest OS was very interesting and and far better in real time than
demos I've heard over the Web would suggest although difficult to get a real
handle on it in this busy environment.

Sara is the new reading machine from freedom scientific and is a brave move
as it is really a modernised version of the old kurzweil machines. The unit
is quite nice, buttons obvious and distinctive without being too bulky, and
the ability to play daisy CDs on the unit as well as scan and read books
makes it more useful however the inability to save data in a way which can
be removed from the unit for later listening is an extremely significant
draw back.

Caretek had a couple of other products as well as the notetaker above which
looked interesting but were quite pricy for example a talking 5m tape
measure accurate to 2mm for £60 and kitchen scales accurate to 2 grams for
£70.

Donkey of the show for me was the wireless locator beacon, a 2 unit device
which activates a buzzer on one unit when you press a button on the other.
A slight improvement on the old wistle to find your keys devices in as far
as it works on rf frequencies so works through walls and doors etc but to my
mind at least £65 for a single pair of units which incidently are pretty
bulky, too much so to attach to for example a keyring is very expensive.

The ultra cane, a white cane with add-on which gives tactiel warning of
upcoming obstructions for up to 4m at a quite reasonable price was
interesting and they are apparently working on a similar device for
attaching to a guide dog harness which can spot over head obsticles, and
things that dogs sometimes miss such as chest high single bar barriers.

With regard to the venue I'd say yes it's better than QAC but still very
crouded, which is probably unavoidable but disappointed that there is still
no number system for stands and some signs lack signage of any sort making
them very difficult to identify.

Best wishes

Adrian Higginbotham
Accessibility and inclusion adviser
British Educational Communications and Technology Agency - BECTA
Tel: Direct dial 024 7679 7333 - Internal extension #2287
Email: Adrian.Higginbotham@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.becta.org.uk/
BECTA, Millburn Hill Road, Science Park, Coventry, CV4 7JJ
-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Hodgson [mailto:andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 19 July 2005 18:26
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; bcab@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Sight Village - my review

Hi all,

Since I actually took time off to go to Sight this year - thought I would
give you a small review for those who were not able to make it - here are
some of the product highlights.  Note I only went round a few sights, and
these were mainly ones I had heard about before.  Although Cobolt were
showing some new products, I just couldn't get in without a major attack
from dogs and people, so didn't bother.

I did, however, manage to get a quick look at the note detecter, which I
found to be very small and compact. Unfortunately, however, I did think
that it would take a bit of getting the note into the device, since it had
to go in quite a long way into it. I had imagined something you could just
pass the note through or put the note on in order for it to work. However,
I can really see a target market for these devices, especially if you have a
lot of notes you want sorting.

One of the companies I think we can see some good inivations coming in the
next year or two is called Code Factory. They first came out with the
Mobile Accessability package, which is still being sold today, which gives
VI people using a series 60 phone a comfortable interface with which to
perform specific key tasks. However, they have now got out a few more
products, including Mobile Speak and Pocket Mobile Speak. These two
products are screen readers, mobile speak being for series 60 and pocket
mobile speak being for any pocket PDA. Mobile speak comes with some extra
tools, and there are add-ons which can be purchased, which include a colour
detector/light probe, as well as a product which allows you to use your PCs
keyboard as a phone keyboard. They also have a user friendly installation
system, but I didn't see this in operation. The Pocket PC version works
with any PDA, as long as you have a bluetooth keyboard for input. A company
called Optilec also do a bluetoo
th braille keyboard, which certainly works with the Mobile Speak product,
but I didn't use it with the PDA product. I certainly think it's a good
thing to have a good competition in this area, especially since Pocket Hal
was the only PDA product which worked on a _standard_ PDA, and Talks was the
only product you could get as a screen reader for a mobile phone.

Code Factory's site is at http://www.codefactory.es/.

I also looked at the new media system from Portset. Now those who remember
the teletext systems they did and loved those will love this product. It is
a talking audio described freeview receiver, which speaks the EPG facilities
(including 7 day EPG) as well as providing a hard disk recorder (and live
pause), time record facilities and also talking teletext. The product is in
a prototype state at the moment, and as such I couldn't really explore it.
It also has a DVD drive, although this facility is not working currently due
to accessability of DVDs. I must say a few things about this product,
because I think Portset have been very brave in designing a product which
[A] replaces the old teletext reader, [B] provides a modern equavilent of
the television receiver (where no license is required) and [C] gives a VI
person a small box with all these features installed. They have a battle
with teletext currently, since in the Freeview world each operator has
really their own c
hoice over how things are done, and there is no standard in making these
accessible or presentable to anything other than a standard Freeview box.

If you were going to Sight Village this week, I would definitely give this a
look.

I also met up with Blazie who explained about the new version of the Pacmate
software, and they were updating current units whilst there (although I was
very early in the morning, and it was very quiet in the stand).
Unfortunately I did not have my unit with me, and when trying to download
update from FS direct, it told me my serial was not allowed!! Will need to
get that sorted.

At Steve's stand I looked at the new System Access from Freedombox, which I
was very impressed with. There are two versions available for portable
use - one on a CD and one on a USB key. The USB key version I think came in
at just over £300, including all the software. I am not sure whether you
need to keep a Freedombox subscription up with that as well yearly. I was
very impressed with the plug in, use it, remove it and no trace being left
approach, which unfortunately is not the same with the Dolphin Pen (although
the Dolphin Pen has magnification, and needs no yearly subscription). The
system also has a recovery option, which means if the contents gets damaged,
you can re-install the contents if you have an active Internet connection.
Unfortunately, due to no connection being available, we were not able to
look at the Freedom Box itself. I have downloaded a copy, but am only able
to look at the desktop bit, and not System Access, so can't say how well the
screen rea
der performs. There was also the GW Micro notetaker there, but
unfortunately I got so swampt with notetakers today, I didn't get to
memorise what the specialities with this one were.

I also saw the Oacis (spell) mobile from RNIB, which although has only basic
features, is smaller than any series 60 phone, and the battery also lasts a
lot longer.

This had been my first Sight at the new venues, and overall I found them
slightly better than the old stuffy venue of QAC, however, I think that
companies like Cobalt would do a lot better with larger stands, where they
could get more people in. I certainly think that notetakers will be an
interesting development over the following years, with even bets on whether
we loose the specialist models for blind people approach and go with
standard PDAs with bluetooth accessories, or wether these go altogether.

Thanks.
Andrew.


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