In attendance: (13 participants)
Derry Walsh; Ken Walsh; Pat McCarthy; Martha Parkinson; Pat Walsh; Jackie
McBrearty; Noreen Meagher; Chris Egan; Declan Meenagh; Elaine O'Neill;
Cearbhall O'Meadhra; Gavin Allman; Bert Brown.
Pat Walsh joined the meeting by phone and asked if he could receive a list of
all the online services being offered by Fighting blindness at the moment.
Pat McCarthy has purchased a new iPhone SE for €499. It appears to be exactly
the same as the iPhone 8. He found that the camera gives a better result when
running Seeing AI. He finds it to be good value at €400 after VAT is reclaimed.
Pat Walsh pointed out that his iPhone 5S gives 128GB but is no longer supported
by Apple. The group recommended that he look to the new SE even though it has
only 64gb storage but is an excellent next buy. With his 5S Unlocked, he is in
a position to find the best service provider at a lower monthly rate.
Refurbished phones are available at cheaper rates.
Noreen raised the topic of avoiding unwanted contect while shopping. this led
to a discussion of new guidance apps with proximity sensors to warn of oncoming
obstacles and people. Research is ongoing but worth watching out for
developments. Some participants recommended online shopping or phoning and
having goods delivered. Bert noted that a blind person in difficulties on their
own is stuck as nobody can come next or near them.
Jackie reported that she is using Seeing AI with great success recently. She
uses the Short text channel and the bar code channel. She agreed that she only
gets a partial read of a product label but this is usually sufficient for
identification of the product.
Pat Walsh and Jackie each reported a very responsive and efficient service from
Be My Eyes.
In a discussion of access to books, people are using Audible, BorrowBox for
audio and searchable PDF for eBooks. It was pointed out that Audible allows the
reader to adjust the amount of audio to jump forward or back up to 60 seconds
if required. Sleep mode is available in both audio apps and stops the reading
at a designated interval chosen by the user.
Declan mentioned that Scribd is a paid subscription service that is available
and accessible on Android. This gives him access to random audio books and
magazines.
NCBI offers a service called Bookshare Ireland that gives access to half a
million academic books.
Bert recommended reading Bookshare items using Voicedream so that image formats
could be easily converted by OCR within the app and then read using the
built-in audio feature.
The group reported varying experiences with Zoom registration on iPhone and
iPad. It was not clear that there was any advantage in registering in zoom or
using it unregistered. Martha found that Zoom showed the meeting history on her
iPad but not on her iPhone. She agreed to reinstall zoom on the iPhone and see
if that allowed her to access the meeting history.
It was noted that basic users of Zoom could hold group meetings longer than the
advertised 40 minutes but that they would be thrown out of the meeting after 40
minutes if the zoom server became overloaded.
The meeting concluded with a warning from Declan that members beware of a scam
in which someone comes to their door pretending to be a member of An garda
Siochana and advised that people ring the local station to ascertain if the
person is really a Garda before accepting them.
All the best,
Cearbhall
m +353 (0)833323487 Ph: _353 (0)1-2864623 e: cearbhall.omeadhra@xxxxxxx
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