I'd love to know a bit more detail about Alison's post below.
I suppose the very first question would be:
Why is the Goodmans Smart Talk box £102 on the RNIB site but around
£20 everywhere else? eg http://goo.gl/zDn2V
That said, the TVOnics box price is the same elsewhere as RNIB, just
wondering about the £80 discrepancy for the Goodmans.
I've got some questions and observations, particularly relating to the
following paragraph:
RNIB invested 1.7 million pounds in the delivery of a technical library.
This we did after establishing that the industry believed what we were
asking for was completely impossible, technically not viable, and we had
exhausted discussions with Europe and government with regard to funding.
(I was told by technical experts at the European digital TV level that
it was impossible to conceive of talking TV for at least 15 years).
What exactly is this £1.7 million "technical library"? Have you got a
link where I can read this?
Must be one hell of a library...
You say the "the industry believed what we were asking for was
completely impossible, technically not viable..."
Sounds to me like a builder coming for a quote, sucking in through his
teeth, and saying "you won't see much change out of 5 grand to stop
that tap leaking, love!".
Since 1965, Moore's Law has been accurately predicting that every 18
months, technology doubles in power and halves in price.
There are standalone "computer on a chip" chipsets which will run
embedded Java and synthesise speech available for under £10, with many
free implementations of the Linux operating system which will run on
these devices. The EPG data is already decoded to and converted to
text to display; what's the technical difficulty with running it
through.
My mobile phone is already a year old but it can take and display
pictures and video in 3D without glasses, talk me through directions,
connect to the internet and play iplayer, voice guide me through the
whole process etc. It cost £219 full price, no contract, SIM-free.
And of course I have my own radio for the blind which will read TV now
and next; obviously you have to pick channels as it doesn't know what
you're watching, but it illustrates that the data is there.
So when they say "impossible to conceive of talking TV for at least 15
years", I'm afraid I think someone is taking the pee.
With a bit of funding and the right bunch of enthusiastic geeks and
hackers, this could have been done years ago. There are groups like
London Hackspace which could have probably knocked up a prototype in a
couple of evenings. But I don't think the RNIB help themselves.
When I asked if my 4-page website could get the SurfRight logo, the
quote came in at over £250 per page or over £4 per word.
After some negotiation, as my site was quite simple, I was offered a
special rate of "only" £120 per hour.
I also had a cup of coffee with a few other small businesses at a
recent disability show, and they were complaining that the RNIB fees
were massive, and in one case, RNIB wanted 50% cut to sell the product
through their shop.
Then there's the RNIB site; it's been incredibly slow over a year,
Google rank it as 62/100 for quality and give it an F on the A to F
scale, and as the average page load time is over 8 seconds it makes it
slower than 80% of sites on the internet. By chance I had an email
conversation with a guy who consulted for RNIB for long enough for him
to conclude that the site cost a "staggering amount for what it was"
and much of the RNIB technical team were what he termed "old school
consultants who thought IE6 was cutting edge technology".
As I noted above, RNIB retail the Goodmans Smart Talk for £102, about
£80 more than other outlets, so taking all of the above together, when
people wonder why products for the blind take so long to make and cost
so much, perhaps that might explain it...
On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 2:22 PM, Long, Alison <Alison.Long@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Following the various posts on this topic, I thought it might be helpful
to have a position statement/update on RNIB activity from Steve Tyler,
who leads on our developments in this area. See below. Alison
Hi,
I am writing to correct some assumptions that are being made and to
give you a flavour of our strategy at RNIB.
Firstly, Panasonic are a trail blazer; and so are Tvonics. Indeed,
Tvonics have been supported by RNIB financially and with other expertise
to deliver what they have; Panasonic certainly utilised expertise, but
there was no specific funding.
Our strategy (which is still in play and we are limited by what we can
say) is broadly as follows:
RNIB invested 1.7 million pounds in the delivery of a technical library.
This we did after establishing that the industry believed what we were
asking for was completely impossible, technically not viable, and we had
exhausted discussions with Europe and government with regard to funding.
(I was told by technical experts at the European digital TV level that
it was impossible to conceive of talking TV for at least 15 years).
By investigating how the industry worked, and what the most effective
levers were to pull, we adopted the following approach:
* build a technical solution from which manufacturers could select code
or chipsets and/or user interface tips;
* make that available in such a way to avoid or minimise costs;
* don't settle at doing that but deliver a working product on the market
that proved the point (the Harvard Goodmans SmartTalk - the first box of
its kind in the world).
We supported Tvonics in delivering a fully functional PVR box, and
stimulated TV industry to deliver mainstream accessible solutions
(Panasonic being the first of that category and we fully expect more).
at the same time we have:
* worked with Sky to deliver a prototype solution that is now branded as
theirs (we want them to improve on that);
* we are working to increase access to Virgin;
* we are focussed on educating mainstream retail sector;
* we are continuing to work in areas like audio description etc.
I hope that gives you a flavour of the level of investment and energy we
are putting in to accessible TV. We are now the envy of the blindness
world (the UK is the best place to watch TV if you are VI).
More to come; but all of these issues and products are linked in to an
on-going story still to play out....
Steve Tyler
Head of Innovation and Development
RNIB
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