[access-uk] Accessible Set top box
- From: "JOHN" <john.godber@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:48:52 +0100
hello,
I do hope people will welcome the new settop box and some of you will come
and see it at Sight Village along with several other innovative new
products from RNIB. It doesn't all stop with the Penfriend you know!
I thought it might be helpful to give you now as much of the background to the
development of the settop box as I can. So I apologise for the length of this
post.
There are three elements to our work on accessible TV.
First, RNIB has developed a chipset which can be used in any TV, settop box,
entertainment centre, DAB radio etc to make it speak. This chipset is now
available in the electronics industry and those of you who have picked up the
promotion from Ocean Blue can see an early example of companies taking up our
technology. Our intention, quite simply, is to take away any barriers, actual
or perceived, which put manufacturers off designing speech output into new
devices. By using our chipset they can, if they choose, make all new TVs and
boxes talk. Like all commercial companies they will do this if either
government legislation makes them do it or if they believe there is a
commercial opportunity.
The second element was for us to get our own box designed and built and made
available right now. Making the chipset available to manufacturers doesn't
actually guarantee that anybody will make a box. So we've done it ourselves
with Goodmans. The box will be available in the high street as well as from
RNIB. We provide accessible instructions of course and we suspect that many
high street stores won't want the administrative hassle of dealing with VAT
exemption forms. But it's just up to you where you want to buy it! It's your
choice.
We hope that it will also feature in the government Help scheme for the
digital switchover. And, of course, if manufacturers do start to pick up on
accessibility in the mainstream there will be new products at lower prices and
with better functionality round the corner so, just like everybody else, it
will be almost impossible to know when will be the right time to buy a box
because the day after you take the plunge somebody will advertise one twice as
good for half the price. but that's just life!
The third element was to make technology which manufacturers and broadcast
distributors (like Sky and Virgin) could use to make an add-on box to make
their existing set top boxes talk without having to roll out whole new boxes. .
Again it is up to those companies to decide just how they implement their own
solutions. What we have done is make it possible for them and other
manufacturers to offer accessible products at very low additional cost.
So we will continue to work with and apply pressure to companies to bring out
more accessible products as soon as possible. However nothing works better than
individual blind people contacting companies and saying clearly why
accessibility is so important.
We will also be developing a PVR with recording capabilities ourselves which we
intend will also be able to recieve our magazines, newspapers and books for
download too. But I can't right now give you an accurate date for that to be
ready.
As you may imagine it is difficult to get it right when it comes to sharing
information about things in development. It is so easy to raise expectations
only to disappoint customers because something has slipped in the schedule or
problems that weren't anticipated have come up.
So I am being as open about what we are doing and why as I think makes most
sense now. I won't put a blow by blow account on this list to monitor progress
over the next few months. I just hope that based on the information above and
on you seeing developments like the Penfriend that you will trust the folks
here in RNIB Products are definitely on your side and working as hard as we can
to remove barriers and make life that bit more accessible for us all. We're
just as mad as the rest of you that sometimes things which seem so
straightforward and obvious take so long to become real.
With good wishes,
John Godber
Head of Products and Publications
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