[talks-uk] Re: Wayfinder etc.
- From: "Graham Page" <gpage@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <talks-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 17:07:35 +0100
Wayfinder etc.Hi Tim.
this answer may be straying a bit away from TALKS but I have certainly been
wandering about this myself quite a bit lately. If I had to identify the one
thing that is a significant disadvantage with being blind it is going somewhere
I have never been and not being able to easily find anything about my
surroundings independently e.g. the way back to the place I am staying, what
facilities may be around etc.
I know that at least one and possibly 2 screenreaders are about to be available
on smart phones running the Microsoft Pocket PC operating system. There seems
to be more GPS solutions available for pocket PC and PDA than for Symbian.
MobileSpeak and Pocket Hal are the 2 programs I am thinking of.
Apparantly, at a recent RNIB demonstration, someone did a demo of, or possibly
even just spoke about, T-mobile using its SideKick PDA/smartphone with a GPS
system called CoPilot. I wonder if anyone here has any more information
regarding a possible contact for this?
On the subject of wayfinder, there is also a website called TalkNav go to
www.talknav.com
On their site it says sight and sound are the UK dealers. I believe though
that a company called Communic8 do this product. This company deals with
mobiles for the RNIB and the contact there is Stewart Smith, tel: 08701 600600
I believe that ComputerRoom services also do Wayfinder and a good quality GPS
receiver for £299.00
Both these companies should be able to advise on which version of wayfinder
should be used and ensure the version is compatible.
It's a tricky decision this whole GPs thing at the moment and I think that,
while I would like it yesterday, I will wait just a little while yet.
As a footnote to this rather rambling email, Trekker is thought of highly these
days. It gives high quality information and is much easier to use as the GPS
receiver is now bluetooth. You get information about which street you are
crossing and where things are e.g. in front of you, behind you, etc. It's
expensive though at £900 or so.
Well that went on for a bit longer than intended, but this is where I think we
are with stand alone products. You can of course also get GPs for
Braillenotes/voicenotes and pacmates but this is getting much more expensive,
particularly if you do not have one of these notetakers already or do not fancy
taking it out socially for a walk along the river and a few beers of a saturday
afternoon.
Cheers
Graham
----- Original Message -----
From: tim.pennick@xxxxxx
To: talks-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 4:00 PM
Subject: [talks-uk] Wayfinder etc.
Hi All,
I've been thinking about purchasing Wayfinder but have been somewhat
discouraged by the discussions of problems with version 6. I re-read Stuart
Foster's article in Access-IT magazine a couple of days ago, and came across a
point in it which I thought possibly reduced the value of Wayfinder to me.
This was the fact that when you accidentally depart from the route you're
supposed to be following, Wayfinder doesn't automatically re-calculate the
route from your new position, meaning presumably that if you don't know where
you went wrong, you need to set up a new route from your new position to your
destination.
I'd be interested if any Wayfinder users can confirm this functionality, and
give views as to whether this is a severe limitation.
Also, does anyone have additional info about whether up-coming versions of
Talks or Wayfinder are likely to sort out the problems people have been having
with Wayfinder 6 and Talks.
Many Thanks,
Tim Pennick
Tim Pennick
tel: 01473 609040
email: tim.pennick@xxxxxx
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