[vip_students] Re: TV's that talk here at last!
- From: "Scanlon, Tony" <tony.scanlon@xxxxxx>
- To: vip_students@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:00:16 +0100
Hi All
This mail is taken from the Access UK mailing list today.
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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