EBU Access Cast

Wellcome to the last transcribed edition of the Ebu Access Cast for 2021. Stay tuned till the end because we prepared many nice things for you and if you stay listening, you will hear surprising announcement at the end. However if you are really curious skip out to the end of the shownotes to find out what did we say. Mario bought him self a nice and cheap pair of Sennheiser HD 206 studio headset. On the current list of the best budget studio headsets for 2021, this one sits on the first place. Hlynur got him self Roborock S7 – vacuum cleaner, and Tanja got Seagate One touch 5 tb hard drive as well as SanDisk Ultra Trek™ USB 3.0 Flash Drive 128 GB Another piece of a cool and free gadget is LION - Live, intelligent OCR for NVDA which is able to read direct subtitles. Pawel discovered new addon for NVDA called NVDA Advanced OCR which is able to make direct OCR from the PDF document. Keep in mind that the addon is still in the early stages of development, but it is already very promissing, so if you want to know more about it check it out on its Github page. We are very close to Christmas and black Friday is just behind us, therefore we bring to you a nice article fromm Kelly Ford called Black Friday Accessibility Deals Free for the Taking TwBlue, a famous third party Twitter Client has new version out, and we will talk about what you need to do in order to get it running because direct instalation over previous version will not work. Whatsapp started offering their new beta version of their Client for Windows which we found out to be much more accessible than official release, therefore if you wish to try it out on your pc, here is what you need to do. If you own Samsung Android smartphone which you recently purchased, you are probably wondering when you will get the update to the newest One UI 4? Which comes with Android 12? Well no worries, Android Police prepared a nice article with all information. StSolutions is the company which makes nice online accessible software by using a JS library called designer.js, and Pawell will tell us more about it. AstroAccess is a website which talks about persons with dissability travelling into space. Our inspector gadget Pawell knows more about it.   Our show lasted since May of 2018, during this time we had a nice long season with all of you, and we really enjoyed making it. However due to the many different occupations from each of us who are having our daily jobs, Ebu Access Cast will be taking a break for a while, therefore EBU will keep you informed if the show returns with new crew members, or if the podcast will transform into something different. In the mean time, Mario, Tanja, Pawel and Hlynur wish you all the best for the upcoming holidays, so  if you want to follow us individualy, search for us on Twitter and you will find us for sure.

Welcome back in the 34th episode of the EBU Access Cast where, as always, we provide you with the news around assistive technology and accessibility. This episode, hosted by Paweł and co-hosted by Tanja, Mario and Hlynur contains big amounts of news from the Big companies out there, impressions of technology we have ourselves tested and a nice demo at the end so tune in and enjoy! You can always review the transcript of the podcast if that form suits you better. For any lovers of movies and TV Series, Paweł has tested Teleparty, a browser extension that allows a group of friends to watch a movie together with everyone keeping their individual audio and subtitle settings intact. We then head of to find out what Microsoft has in store. The announcement of the Surface Adaptive Kit  has made rounds all over the Internet. We discuss possible use cases for the blind helped by Tanja who has recently tested one of the Surface laptops.  Of course we did not forget that Windows 11 has recently been released. WE start off the discussion on that particular topic by diving into running Android apps on Windows 11 and how accessible and usable that is going to be. Those of us who have had a chance to run windows 11 share their first impressions. But Microsoft doesn't just stop there. They also organize a handful of webinars addressing all that changed in Windows 11 in regards to accessibility. Speaking of events, this year's editions of the NVDACon and Sighttech Global are taking place soon. On a more negative note, Apple has recently made itself a bit of a bad name with the blind community. Firstly, the developer of the Flicktype keyboard has had problems publishing into the App Store then he discovered his app was turned into an Apple Watch feature. Next, a blind developer has had issues updating one of his games. Finally, a rain of headlines fell upon the Internet as many blind users discovered that Siri features such as checking the call log or sending E-mails were gone. These examples show how lack of awareness on accessibility issues appearing in some departments of even the biggest companies, coupled with the politics behind technology can severely affect our access to solutions we use every day. On the Google front, a new version of the Android Accessibility Suite was released  with a surprisingly huge jump in the version numbering. Are the changes significant enough to justify such a change? We also congratulate the users in Slovenia and Belgium, as Slovenian and Belgian French join the family of Vocalizer voices on Android. Further down the Google line, Youtube is rolling out a slew of new features that should make audio more accessible. Can you hear that audiodescription coming? Come and find out! We also had a last-minute, surprising news from Mastercard who have announced their brand-new accessible card design. We also discussed the appearance of Susan Bennett, the voice actress behind the original Siri voice, in the latest campaign by UserWay. Can the gap in accessibility be bridged by a single line of code and how does the marketing in the accessibility space look like today? To top the whole show off, Hlynur introduces us to Isak, an Icelandic developer behind Retinaid, a way to revolutionize playing tabletop games by blind people. Feel free to contact Isak to find out how you can get involved in testing and check out the list of currently supported games (PDF). You can get in touch with us by sending an e-mail to ebuaccesscast@euroblind.org or reaching out to us on Twitter at @EbuAccessCast Until the next time!

Welcome back to the 33rd episode of the EBU Access Cast Here we provide transcription of the 33rd episode of the EBU Access Cast. In this episode Hlynur, Mario, Tanja and Pawel cover a wide range of topics regarding accessibility, from Pawel's birthday present to himself to a new software suite that turns up Mario's cravings for cheesecake to the maximum… and everything in between. We cover the ongoing European Commission survey on digital accessibility, where the objective is to seek feedback to improve public sector website and mobile apps accessibility. We encourage everyone to partake in the survey and let your voice be heard. Also we took a look at a new mod for the game Hearthstone by Blizzard, how it works and how the new mod has increased its accessibility. The website named Can I play that was also mentioned. Mario went with us through the new Sunu app update for the Sunu band and how he used it patience as a weapon in dealing with some bluetooth issues regarding it. There were not let-downs in the Gadget section. The show's number one online shopper, also known as Pawel, showcased his new JBL Link Portable speaker and Tanja spoke about a Minimize to tray option she finds handy. Some discussions were also about Chromecasting music and more related topics. Tweesecake, not Cheesecake, is a new light-weight, multi-purpose, robust software suite that allows users to easily use keybord commands to control Twitter and Telegra, navigate your file system and much more. We looked in to it. An easy way to create a digital copy of your Covid certificate and store in your phone wallet? Yes please! We took a look at getcovidpass.eu before taking on Apple's “California Streaming” online event and their newcomings. We took a look at what is new inside the newest Beta version of Android 12. And if that wasn't enough already we had discussions on digital accessibility matters from Hlynur's point of view after his Siteimprove conference input. Last but not least, an interview with Gleb Zevkov, CEO of Voxmate. We hope you guys enjoy the show, we sure did!

Welcome back to EBU Access Cast - podcast about assistive technology for blind and partially sighted people. This is transcribed episode 32. Some of us got the EU Covid certificate and we shared our experiences of showing the digital version on the mobile phone as blind persons. We found out that not all PDF viewers on mobile phones open the QR code maximised and therefore this creates difficulties to blind persons to show properly the certificate on the Covid-19 travel checkpoints. Feel free to share your experience with us! Pawel discovered a very handy app for taking notes Simplenote. The notes are synced on all your devices and can be accessed via the web interface as well. We were thrilled to discover that the interface is accessible on all platforms and that every action has an assigned shortcut. We discussed the new accessibility features in iOS15 and compared them with Google announcement of the changes which will come in Android 12. We also commented the Windows 11 accessibility announcement. The NVDA 2021.1 was released in July with many new features and bug fixes. We discovered the NVDA Unmute addon that checks the status of the Windows audio system when NVDA starts. If the sound is muted - the add-on forcibly turns it on. As blind users we find it very useful. Mario discovered the RHVoice, open source TTS engine, that supports 8 languages. Get in contact with us, share your comments or suggestions via email ebuaccesscast@euroblind.org or via Twitter @ebuaccesscast.

It is almost summer, but we are not giving up, in fact we came to the Episode 31 of the Ebu Access Cast, and boy we found many different topics to discuss. However if you think that you herd anything, no no you didn't because we have a Special interview for you about Navilense which you can hear towards the end of the Episode. But at the beginning Pawel said that he found a nice iOS app called Replica which allows iOS user to make audio and Video stream thru their Browser, and Mario told us his positive Opinion about newest generation of the Svarovsky white cane which is very different than the previous canes from the same Brand. After gadgets we talked about Twitter and different ways how you can use it, thru its native interface and a bunch of integrated shortcuts which you can find in the very nice Review, as well as Usage of 3rd party clients for Twitter. Different Messenger clients are todays Standard in the comunication, but are they equally accessible? Mario Talked about Whatsapp web set of scripts which are being developed by blind developer Juliano Lopes which bring up more accessibility features into Whatsapp web while using it thru your Browser, and Pawel found out the Add-on for NVDA for desktop version of Whatsapp Client. We touched the topic of accessibility of Telegram for Android and iOS as s Signal which became very populär in the last few months. Since we mentioned many different Messengers we thought that its the best time tob ring you the news that Clubhouse became available for Android, and Mario introduced Clubdeck, very accessible unoficial Clubhouse  Client to the general audience. However if you thought that this is everything from us for todays döse of how to comunicate, wait a second. Pawel is also having the anouncement about Elten, new very advanced audio Network from Poland for blind people. It As the Summer started to show its strenght, it looks like that after a long long time of not being able to travel, we will be able to do that with new Covid green passports, and in the next article you can read more about itt. After all the topics which we had, it is a time for dezert, and that is the interview about Navilense, very nice System which uses specially made QR codes developed to help blind people to use them in so many different ways. CEO and founder of the Navilense company Mr. Javier PIta gave exclusive interview to Hlynur and Pawel and Tanja prepared also a Short demo of their newest feature called Navilense 360. In this Episode we prepared so many things for you, but now its time for you to tell us what do you think about it. As always contact us on Twitter or send us e-mail and we will look forward to be back with you in 6 weeks just at the end of July.

Welcome back to the 30th episode of the Ebu Access Cast, the big THREE ZERO! In this episode, Hlynur makes his debut as a lead host, joined by the always charming Tanja, Mario and Pawel. We covered a lot of current issues... everything from binaural recordings of a volcano in Iceland to an audio version of an IKEA catalogue. Pawel told us about his new gadget, the Sennheiser Ambeo Smart Headset and we even get to hear some recordings he created for us and let us take a peak into his daily adventures. Hlynur told us about the Dark Reader Chrome Extension, which enables users to customize the way webpages look, turn light theme pages into dark theme, increase color contrast etc. There were some news we covered, like Microsoft's acquisition of Nuance, who are most famous for the much-loved Siri, the Accessibility Mousepad from Iceland, that was based on a design from UK Home Office and has been shared in GitHub for others to use, translate and produce and the ongoing issue with external bluetooth keyboards not working with many special characters if using both Android 11 and Talkback together. We also discussed how a normal user can get in touch and report bugs and errors to Google  We took a close look at Accessible Overlays, what they are and what they are meant to do and how they are really not working and often making matters worse than fixing them. We also discussed some companies who are offering these overlays as a paid-for service and also how you, as a user, can get rid of them. There are many articles and podcasts who have covered this issue, for example a deep-dive 3 hour podcast of Mosen at large, especially covering it. For those who wish to read more about this, here is a link to an extensive Fact sheet on accessibility overlays. We also talked about how audio-only media seems to be on the rise with large platforms like Clubhouse growing rapidly and huge companies like IKEA releasing their catalogue as an audio book. The Sight City 2021 conference, that was supposed to take place in Frankfurt in May, will be hosted as a virtual-only event. We discussed how that might affect the conference as a whole, the number of companies showcasing their products and more. Finally, Mario shares a piece of his limitless brilliance and expertise, giving us a demo of how you can easily transfer audio from your smartphone to a PC via bluetooth. We really hope you enjoy this landmark episode and will join us next time. Should you have any questions, remarks or content you would like to contribute, you can reach us by email at ebuaccesscast@euroblind.org or twitter! As always, you can also explore the transcript of this episode.   All the best from our entire team!

Welcome back to the 29th episode of the Ebu Access Cast, one away from thirty. In this episode, hosted by Pawel and co-hosted by Tanja, Mario and Hlynur, we find the time to look into the future indeed, but for most of the time we stay focused on what matters for now, of course. In absence of new gadgets from either of the Podcast crew, Mario shares with us the Story of how the name Bluetooth came to signify the popular data transmission protocol and it turns out to be a valuable lesson of common history and geography as well as an insight into how technological inventions receive their often unusual names. Did we already mention that this episode is out of this world? This is not us bragging about it, rather we had a chance to discuss the landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars which, apart from the next foray onto the red planet, brought us the first ever recordings from out of Earth, some of which we are happy to present to you in the podcast directly. In this section we also find out how far it is really from Iceland to Mars and that the European Space Agency is actually thinking of recruiting disabled astronauts in the framework of their Parastronaut Feasibility Project. For those who are hungry for more space adventure, here are some more sounds of Mars. While space agencies of the world are busy exploring other planets, the new Talkback has moved outside of the Galaxy and is now available on many more phones than just the latest Samsungs. Those of us running Android share the first and not so first experiences and mourn the slow demise of some old TTS voices that cease to work on many devices due to the lack of support for the 64-bit infrastructure. What we did not mention in the show as it happened shortly after its recording is the update of the Samsung version of Talkback which brings back the integrated Braille keyboard so there is no need to put extra work to enjoy this functionality on these phones. Fortunately, the fate of the voices we mentioned earlier has been narrowly missed by the Icelandic-speaking community who will soon be able to enjoy new voices and other tools for the Icelandic language. As this has been a long-term project that is finally showing some results and everything has been built from scratch, we speak of a large-scale achievement that has the potential to improve the quality of life for an entire nation. Well done Iceland! We also discuss the new Humanware Brailliant line of Braille Displays. Is a device that lies in between a traditional braille display and a feature-packed Braille notetaker sporting an entire operating system something that will interest the assistive technology market? We will probably see about that in due course. Meanwhile, we will learn how to be Handsome, thanks to a French fintech that claims to be the first bank dedicated to disabled customers. Their connected payment card which allows a blind user to track the entire payment process through their smartphone sounds sweet indeed but is it the final solution to the inaccessibility of payment terminals? Finally, as the world is beginning to enjoy access to the long-awaited COVID-19 vaccine, we wonder whether blind people can partake in this access and apply for their shot independently. We share our impressions regarding the accessibility of vaccination application procedures  and, in some cases, application for a COVID-19 test. Remember that, should you be lost about how to fill in accessibility bug reports regarding public sector websites, there are resources available that will help you out such as this report template from Big Hack. Provided we will still be on this planet in six weeks’ time, we will catch up with you in the 30th episode of the show. Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy this one. Should you have any questions, remarks or content you would like to contribute, you can reach us by email at ebuaccesscast@euroblind.org or twitter! As always, you can also explore the transcript of this episode.   All the best from our entire team!

Welcome back to EBU Access Cast - podcast about assistive technology for blind and partially sighted people. This is episode 28 transcript. We wish you all the best for a happy and healthy 2021!   In this post-Christmas episode, we review some of the new personal gadgets.   Tanja presents us her new Microphone Yeti Nano from Blue which is an USB condenser microphone - perfect for recording podcasts and for live streaming.   Mario talks about his new open-ear wireless bone conduction headset Aftershokz aeropex.   For all musicians among our listeners that are tired of using cables on instruments, Mario tested out a digital wireless system for guitars and basses Boss wl-20.   Pawel was surely the most creative in the team and recommended us a music pillow that can be plugged in any sound equipment via a 3.5 mm Jack cable and listen while falling asleep. The model that he got is from Kanguru.   Pawel recommended us also a winter cap with built in BT headset from GeekerChip.   We were happy to announce that the bug in Zoom was fixed. _We mentioned the bug in episode 27. Screen reader users should not experience issues anymore while using the virtual background on Zoom. A big shout-out to Zoom that fixed this bug so quickly.   In the accessibility news section, we covered the 2021 edition of CES. This year was the first time CES was entirely virtual rather than in its usual location of Las Vegas. Tech brands were still able to show off the best new technology that will be soon available on the market. Our pick of devices that were introduced at CES 2021: Turn-by-turn descriptive navigation Aware app by Sensible Innovations. Mudra Band for the Apple Watch that remaps small finger movements into standard Apple Watch gestures for persons with physical or cognitive disabilities.   Inclusive design is the concept that drives many big brands like Microsoft or Google. We share the interview from Engadget with Microsoft’s chief accessibility officer Jenny Lay-Flurrie and Google’s product manager for Android Accessibility Brian Kemler.   Microsoft Seeing AI app is a clear example how AI can be used to make visual information accessible to visually impaired persons. In the version 4.0, the new World channel was introduced that explores the space around you and represents them in 3d sound. You can check more information on the latest updates in the Seeing AI changelog.   Microsoft Azure Text to Speech service offers neural voices that sound natural like humans. It can speak in 54 languages and you can test it out on the Microsoft Azure page. Developers can make use of this service to build apps and services that speak naturally. Neural voices are not yet available for screen readers, but we hope that Microsoft will make them available as TTS voices in one of the future Windows updates.   After the strong earthquake in Croatia, we investigated the accessibility of earthquake apps. We found the most accessible and customisable My earthquake alerts. As mobile app for iOS and Android. It notifies the user about the latest earthquakes from all over the world via push notifications. It uses information from earthquake agencies such as EMSC. We were disappointed to discover that Last Quake, the official app from EMSC, does not have a fully accessible mobile app for iOS and Android.   Screen reader users that use Facebook know that images that do not have alternative text are automatically described. We talk about the latest Facebook improvement on the automatic alternative text.   Mario and Pawel speak about the new TalkBack in Android 11 and the collaboration between Google and Samsung.   We mentioned the European Android 11 schedule update for Samsung.   The Icelandic Association of the Visually Impaired (BIAVI) used the accessibility posters and turned them into mouse pads that they give to programmers, designers and staff working in the IT industry to remind them on basic accessibility recommendations.   Get in contact with us, share your comments or suggestions via email ebuaccesscast@euroblind.org or via Twitter @ebuaccesscast.

Wellcome to the transcribed 27th EbuAccessCast! This episode is the last for 2020, so we prepared nice Goodies for you this time, and we got some new faces in the show as well.   NEW Android Talkback Update (2020): Multi Finger Gestures Google officially came out with Android 11 about 2 months ago but if you look at the official help pages from Google Accessibility Suite, you will not find anything about new multi fingered gestures, which we think is total shame for Google since this is really a huge forward for android accessibility. However young enthusiasts from Liveaccessible site compiled all the list of multi fingered gestures and they published it on their web site including very nice Youtube presentation. Again, double shame for Google.   Tanja discovered a huge bug in Zoom which is so far undocumented and which appears only if you use screen readers with it. Basically Zoom chrashes if you try to use virtual backround when running JAWS or NVDA, and once the crash appears, it is not visible on the screen for anybody. Tanja also prepared a short demo presentation so everyone can hear it what’s going on. If you encounter the same while using virtual backround with screen readers, inform Zoom about it so we get the bugfix soon.   Microsoft Teams should have Slack and Zoom on alert with its latest update Yeah that's right, Teams is pushing forward very much and it is very accessible, even more than Zoom from Mario’s opinion and Microsoft just added the possibility of using your private Microsoft account with it.   Google is coming out with a new interesting thing called Project Guideline If you are into sports, or better to say running specifically, this piece of news will be very much interesting for you. There is also a video about the project which shows what's exactly going on. Again, unfortunately not audio described, even though it is related to blind people directly. Again we think that Google should really better promote its products and build better structure when accessibility is included.   This Device Lets Blind Women Take Pregnancy Tests in Privacy All of us who are in the team of EEBU Access Cast think that this is a great step forward for raising awareness about the rights of blind women, and we support the idea 100%. Let’s hope that in the not far future we will start to see Pregnancy Tests as a standard offers in every pharmacy!   Playstation 5 decided to surprise all the gamers with accessibility news: They have expanded their screen reader to support the most wide-spread European languages, there is also now an accessible first-time running wizard that lets you pick the accessibility options you need and your preferences carry across all of the experience so if you tick a need for audiodescription in the settings, you'll get it everywhere it's available E.G> in games, on Netflix etc. If you’re wondering how it sounds in a real demonstration, than check out the following youtube video.   A new interesting product called envision Glasses just started to hit the market. Thankfully to our listeners we got a very nice demo contribution from MR. Benjamin Hofer from Germany.   2020, was quite ruff year for all of us, but we were able to go thru it, and therefore we will be back with you in 2021 even better than we were so far. So, in the name of whole crew we wish you safe and healthy holidays, stay safe, and send us comments and suggestions on our email and Twitter when ever you have the time!

Welcome back to this month's edition of the EBU Access Cast, as always packed with the latest assistive technology news and gadget discussion. Our content in written form is in our transcript.   We started this one off with Mario telling us all about his brand-new phone, the Samsung Xcover Pro, the latest in the famous line of rugged, durable smartphones made by Samsung. This experience gives us a chance to discuss what to watch out for when choosing the right Android smartphone, including some less obvious characteristics, and how to make sure you will not need to return your purchase days after bringing it home.   Not only Mario did have an interesting device to present, as Paweł got a hold of Feelspace Navibelt, an aid in form of a belt worn around the waist that makes independent navigation easier.     We broke off the path of new hardware to point at a survey opened by the EDF where the opinion of disabled citizens is asked regarding the accessibility of public sector websites following the deadline of the 23rd of September which is when the Web Accessibility Directive should be met by all of the EU member states.   Our discussion of new devices carried on to the news section as well, as we discussed the latest Google event which, short as it was, introduced us to a slew of new speakers, smartphones and even a much smarter Chromecast streaming device. Beyond the event, Google surprised us all, with a little help from Ubisoft, by presenting the feature of alternative audio tracks for youtube videos. Will audiodescription become the new norm on the world's most popular video sharing platform and how easy is it to find the new option?   As is often the case with us, we also took a moment to check out what is new with the most essential pieces of software, the screen readers. While NVDA 2020.3 introduces system keys' emulation and changes for touch screen users, JAWS 2021 beta greets us with Sharky, its brand-new voice assistant, and some more image recognition news.   We also had to share an unfortunate piece of news regarding Samsung's Voice Assistant. Beginning with One UI 3.-, Samsung's Android experience based on Android 11, the company has decided to retire its own screen reader in favour of Google's Talkback. Does Talkback have any real competition at the moment and how easy is it to bring a new screen reading experience to the Android platform? What were your memories connected with the Voice Assistant?     Should you have any questions or queries, do not hesitate to contact us using our email or Twitter.   Stay tuned and, most of all,  healthy and safe in these difficult times.   Until the next episode coming to you in November.

Welcome back to 25 transcribed episode of EBU Access Cast - podcast about assistive technology for blind and partially sighted people! We started this episode with a short presentation of the EBU 2020 award best practices in web accessibility The EBU jury attributed the first prize to EBU Czech Blind United (SONS) for its contribution in encouraging public and private sector organisations to improve their web accessibility. The European Commission and the European Disability Forum organised on 23 September the online WEBINAR on the web accessibility directive marking this important date by which all public sector websites across the EU will have to be accessible for persons with disabilities. If you attend often online events via Zoom and if you would like to adjust the verbosity of the events the new NVDA addon for Zoom can help you to enhance your Zoom expirience. If you would like to separate the screen reader from the other sounds on your computer, you can do this by using Audiomixer by the Dutch company Babbage. Have you noticed that the native Facebook website became screen reader accessible? Ingeneers from Facebook explain how they built accessibility into the new Facebook interface Microsoft opened the Accessibility Fundamentals training to everyone. The course is composed of 4 modules that give a basic understanding of accessibility in Microsoft products. Android 11 has been launched and we commented the new accessibility features. The Google Lookout app has been updated and now Android users can benefit from having a similar application as Seeing AI on iOS. Pawel prepared for you a demonstration so stay tuned until the end of our episode to hear how it works. Google Chrome started to generate accessible PDF documents by keeping the HTML structure from the saved webpage. Libre Office 7.0 introduces accessibility checkers for documents Wondering how to wash or iron a shirt? Laundry Lens is the app that can read care labels on clothes to determine the washing conditions. Lego Braille Bricks, a set of bricks for children to learn Braille, launches in a couple of European countries We also announced the new, virtual event, Sight Tech Global which will be organised on the 2 and 3 December 2020. If you want to stay in touch with us you can contact us via Twitter and our E-mail. Till next time stay safe!

Wellcome to the 24th episode of the Ebu Access Cast. If you are following u our  Twitter account you probably noticed that last month was unusually busy for us, because we were looking for new contributors for our podcast. After a set of interviews and selection of the Vacancies which we received from you, we are slowly starting to introduce new members of our expanded team. This time for you Xavier Ciscar and David Ciscar from Barcelona join us for almost 2 hours of very cool debate and exchange of opinions about the news from assistive tech industry. We prepared for you something really special at the end of the show, and that is the exclusive demo of Miele WDD 131 Guideline washing machine which is accessible to blind people. A special Thanks goes to Tanja Kleut who prepared very nice demo of the product. We would like to remind you that from the previous Episode our podcast Comes with the transcript, so if you have any problems with getting our audio content, you are more than wellcome to read thru it.   WWDC20 is behind us, therefore we are bringing to you the news from New Apple accessibility features coming this fall which will make technology usable and more accessible to all   Twitter Is Coming Out with Audio Tweets on iOS and they announced new API which might bring back many features which Twitter took away 2 years ago.   Chrome/Chrome OS Accessibility Version 83 Release Notes showed up on the internet as well, but if you in the mean time got version 84, don't worry, Google is just very quick with their Chrome releases.   Accessibility changes in the latest Firefox are bringing many improvements to screen reader users as well.   Unfortunately the future isn't so bright for the AR projects for the Moment, because we found out that Bose Shuts Down Sound Project.   If you like Computer and Video games, you will be very happy to know that Naughty Dog Makes PlayStation Game Accessible.   If you are curious to know when new Android 11 comes out, than we got  possible spoiler for you because, Google may release the stable Android 11 update on September 8th which will bring up many new accessibility improvements.   There are new releases for both NVDA (2020.2 ) and JAWS (the June update.   In case you didn't know Whatsapp became much more integrated with Google assistant, so this time for you we bring you the tip which is explaining How to make a WhatsApp voice or video call with Google Assistant   At the end you can listen to the demo of Miele WDD131 washing machine, which Tanja prepared for us and for you. If you would like to give us any kind of Feedback we are available as always on out Twitter and email. We will go on a month of vacation and will be back with you in September, so till than, stay safe and take care.

Welcome back to EBU Access Cast - podcast about assistive technology for blind and partially sighted people! We are happy to say that from now on you are able to listen our podcast with the transcript which will bring better inclusion to all the listeners with different dissabilities, so if you want to read what we said, head over to it! Lockdown measures are being eased further after 3 months of restrictions and most of us have been teleworking in that period. Owning a decent headset with a good microphone is important for virtual meetings. Tanja purchased new headset from MPOW for this purpose and shared with us her impressions.   We talk about the new features in iOS 13.5 and the Apple Exposure Notification System which lets apps from public health authorities and governments worldwide help people figure out if they've been exposed to COVID-19, and if so, what steps to take next to minimize the spread of the virus.   Staying on the same topic we spoke about SODAR - the Google's experimental web app that helps the user measure 2 metres by using augmented reality and keep the distance from other people. None of us managed to make it work on our devices. Mario recommended to use the Sunu band for this purpose as the user can adjust in the phone app the distance of an obstacle to be announced.   Microsoft released the Spring feature update for Windows 10, a.k.a. version 2004 wwith many accessibility improvements for blind and partially sighted people.   What if we could read braille without touching the surface? German researchers have developed an ultrasonic haptic speaker HaptiRead that allows to display Braille dots without contact.   New Art Scanning Method Offers 3-D Image Of Painting’s Brush Strokes This technology could help improve online art lessons and virtual museum tours as well as make paintings more accessible to visually impaired people.   As of May 2020, the alternative text has been enabled by default on the web interface of Twitter as well as iOS and Android apps. This is a great progress for our community and we hope that users will take advantage of it and describe images that they are adding to their tweets.   We take the oportunity to share you the anouncement on the webinar from Be My Eyes on how top companies like Microsoft and google are benefiting from accessibility   Be My Eyes introduces customizable Siri shortcuts for iPhone users.   Paweł presented us the project Hello Emma that uses provisoric Siri setup for the languages that don't support it natively using a system of interconnected Siri shortcuts that respond to commands and perform the usual Siri actions. The languages supported for now are Czech, Slovak and there is a development process going on for Polish and Hungarian.   We spoke about the I-Cane that is a smart cane with navigation via a connected phone app and obstacle avoidance developed through a cooperation of the Lion Club departments in different European countries.   We hope to enspire some of our listeners to start doing workout at home or to continue if they had to stop in their sport centres. We found few resources with audio described workouts. The first is from BlindAlive where you can download different workouts from cardio, pilates to yoga meditations, whatever you prefer. Another place to find audio described workoutss is at the website of the British Blind Sport The accessible fitness trackers can help you in monitoring your progress to help you attain your health and fitness goals. Google Fit is one of them and Mario shared his expirience with us on the accessibility of the application on the Fosil Gen 5 watch.   As always, we look forward to you sharing your comments and feedback with us. Feel free to reach out  via our email or Twitter. Until the next edition!

Welcome back to the May edition of the EBU Access Cast, full of interesting news from the Assistive Technology and Digital Accessibility industries.     We kicked off this one by holding a small exchange of Android apps between Mario and Paweł including email clients and useful Wear OS apps.   WE then discussed all that is new and accessible in the latest release of Chrome marked with the version number 81.   Apart from browsers, both of the popular Windows screen readers, NVDA and JAWS, have had their latest versions released recently as well.   An episode recorded in May would not be complete without mentioning the Global Accessibility Awareness Day, celebrated on the 21st of this month. As always it is full of various events and activities most of which will be held online this year and so many more of you will be able to attend. Discussing accessibility gave us a chance to wonder how accessible COVID-19 contact tracing apps in different countries of Europe might be and whether this is a reliable solution in its current form.     In the last episode, we pointed to the fact that mask usage instructions in an accessible form have proven to be impossible to find. A month has passed and, surely enough, the German organisation of the blind and partially sighted DBSV have published their own page on using masks.     As we often remind you, books are a great part of accessibility and thanks to an interesting Daisy Consortium webinar, we had a chance to learn about some solutions allowing those with reading disabilities to access their favourite books using smart speakers.   One service not mentioned in the webinar is Pratsam, a Finnish solution that makes it easy for a library to setup their digital access portfolio ready with cloud, web and mobile apps as well as smart speaker skills.     Another company that has not fallen behind in delivering outstanding accessibility experience is Apple. From the patents they have applied for, we can deduce that a support for enhanced photo taking accessibility features are forthcoming and so is the ability to make binaural (3D) recordings with the iPhone. The celebration of this month's accessibility awareness activities has also been marked by their making available of a brand new accessibility website. VoiceOver improvements can be also spotted in the latest release of Logic Pro X, the music-making and sound editing software.   We may learn soon what else is new in regards to accessibility at both Apple and Google as both companies intend to hold their events on the 22th and 3rd of June respectively.     Speaking of large companies and communities, a set of Wordpress-related accessibility resources has been published by the Deque University.   Finally, we shared a way in which all of us could contribute into building amazing technology that will profit us in the future. Mozilla Common Voice is an initiative where everyone can contribute voice data for a wide variety of languages to make it possible for robust speech technologies to be built. Our listeners in Slovenia will be also pleased to know that Tina has joined the Vocalizer TTS family extending the offer of available language options.   As always, we look forward to you sharing your comments and feedback with us. Feel free to reach out  via our email and Twitter to let us know what's on your minds. Until the next edition!

Welcome to this month's edition of the EBU Access Cast. As always, we are bringing you some pretty exciting news in the area of assistive technology.     The current situation caused by the spread of the novel Coronavirus has impacted our lives in multiple ways, especially so in the case of people with visual impairments. It is therefore difficult to escape this subject completely. The news, however, will definitely be useful in coping with the new reality of self-isolation, social distancing and working remotely.     To cover the most frequently asked questions, the EBU has compiled a list of resources where the advice from different national partners regarding mobility, everyday life, safety and help, is provided.   We also mentioned some of those general tips and tricks that will let you stay safe as well as discussed campaigns of the disability umbrella organizations started to ensure that whatever strategy is applied to combat the virus in the different European countries, their disabled citizens will be a part of it.     Next up, we mentioned accessible resources allowing us to stay informed about the situation, including an accessible statistics tracker and an information website by Google.     It is also important to be sure that help is available, should you need it. IHelpYou.app is one example of a service that makes it easy to find local volunteers in your area. The website is of course 100% accessible.     Just like you, we are hoping to go back to normality as soon as possible, although the world Post-Corona will not be the same as it was. Perhaps we will be able to move freely again but how do we make sure that we are safe then? An initiative by Google and Apple may provide a solution to detect the virus where it appears before it spreads too far.     Meanwhile, as a significant part of work has moved online, video conferencing has become the everyday reality of communication and zoom is one of the most used tools to facilitate that. Fortunately, it provides a really accessible and pleasant to use experience which becomes even clearer after listening to Jonathan Mosen's "Meet Me In The Cloud" audiobook, now available for free.     The PEAT have also compiled a list of useful resources that may come in handy when arranging different aspects of working away from your office desk.     The world might have slowed down a little but it does not mean that the assistive technology industry has gone completely silent. Last month, we told you about Google working on a new Talkback version with a Braille keyboard. You've probably heard it from the news all over the Internet by now but that version is already here and, what's even better, that's not everything Android Accessibility wants to surprise us with. As spotted in the development documentation of Android 11, we may be seeing the support for multi-finger gestures rolling out this fall..     IT is meanwhile speculated that Apple may be working on support for third-party text-to-speech voices and that the feature may be seeing the light as soon as iOS 14. Should this be true, and adding to that the appearance of the brand new, long awaited iPhone SE 2020, we may be up for a real mobile accessibility showdown by the end of this year.     The first beta of NVDA 2020.1 is already out and, although not as rich in features as the previous release, welcomes some useful improvements and bugfixes.     Quite often these days, a well-designed CMS tool is capable of performing a lot of the work required to make a website fully accessible. Drupal is proving that with the accessibility tools and enhancements introduced in the 8th version of the engine and next ones are already scheduled for the upcoming release.     For our listeners who are keen on writing, Onkyo and the World Blind Union are inviting you to take part in this year's edition of the Onkyo World Braille Essay Contest. Listen on to find out what it is about and why it is worth taking part in it.     We came back to the subject of Envision Glasses. since our last announcement, the pre-sale has begun and the Envision team started organizing a series of webinars to demonstrate the product and answer all of the burning questions about the device.     Speaking of glasses, one question that comes up a lot when talking about accessibility for the blind is, to what extent can Virtual Reality experiences be enjoyable by those who can't see at all? Microsoft is trying to tackle that one with their prototype of a white cane designed to allow blind users to explore the VR independently. This piece of news allowed us to talk in more general terms about the challenges and chances stemming from VR and 360 degree videos for blind users. Many meaningful insights on this subject can be found in Equal Entry's webinar which you can access upon registration.     That is all for this month but watch this space for the next episode coming by the end of May where we'll be sure to deliver even more exciting news. Meanwhile, feel free to reach out with your thoughts and suggestions through our Email and Twitter.

Wellcome to the 20th episode of Ebu Access Cast. We have come to the 20th episode so far, and we would like to thank you for listening to us. We are preparing some nice goodies for you for the future episodes, but new surprise will be coming to you soon. In the mean time, let's check what's going on in this dark times which hovers around the world.   As the Corona pandemics is taking over the Europe and rest of the world, lots of jobs are transfered to teleworking. We made a research to see how it affects the tech giants and assistive tech industry in general and how the whole situation affects the state of accessibility in different environments.   Tech giants will keep paying hourly staff even if they are asked to stay home due to coronavirus Mr Shadi Abou-Zahra tweeted that schools and universities should not forget to include accessibility in their online courses. Alejandro Moledo also  reminds us that all tv providers which broadcast the emergency information must be accessible to all - so with subtitles, sign language, spoken subtitles and audio description. Pawel from our team discovered Discord, free voice and chat client which has a bunch of nice features, great audio sound and the possibility of having up to 50 users connected for free on the server during the Corona pandemics instead of 10 users. It is available for all major platforms and it offeres a nice accessibility. As the client is equipped with very good audio and video features, some people started to use it for online learning courses.   Due to the prevention of the Corona pandemics many people are transfered to work from their offices to their homes. Since lots of population is not in the offices any more, we still have to maintain our comunication, and it is important that the comunication between each other is safe and encripted. Therefore, we are introducing to you the Signal private messenger, available and accessible for iOS and Android users. Signal offers very nice audio quality of voice calls and audio messages, and what's the most important it offers true end to end encription. For the last few weeks it is recommended messaging client for comunication between European institutions as well. To know more about the Signal check out its Wikipedia page.   Beginning of March brought up some unexpected news for many users of Android Accessibility Suite, where a thousands of public beta testers from all over the world over night were no longer available to get the newest beta versions. Google never came up with the official explanation what happened and why they pulled out so many beta testers at once. Mario and Pawel speculated that this could be because the newest beta version was not supposed to be public version, and it was supposed to be distributed only to the internal testing team. However, even if such huge mistake could be the truth, we would still like to receive the official announcement from Google accessibility team, so as soon as we get any information about it, we will forward it to you. Until that time, we really find this kind of behaviour from such a huge tech giant absolutely untolerable and disgraceful towards the whole visualy impaired Android community.   Voice Dream Scanner appeared also for Android in the last few weeks, so Pawel who tested the application explained what's different between Android and iOS version, as well as how the application works on Android platform.   YouTube gains channel filter in subscriptions, better playback control Accessibility   Codejumper is officialy on sale for 999 Dollars.   Twitter Accessibility channel Tweeted a message about alt texts and their correct implementation for Android and iOS users.   If you are the user of new Microsoft Edge, you will find that DevTools accessibility in Microsoft Edge is Improving from each new release.   This is all we got for you for this month. We wish to all of you to stay healthy, and that you watch over each other untill the next month. As always, we are available for all comunication over our email and Twitter channel.

Welcome to the 19th episode of the EBU Access Cast. This is the second episode that you can listen our podcast in chapters in your favourite podcast player. Find out with us which podcast players support EBU Access Cast chapters.   Mario shared with us his experience about Focus 40 Blue 5th Gen refreshable braille display from Freedom Scientific. The device is light, small, sturdy and it can have 5 simultaneous bluetooth connections and one USB Type-C. It works both as braille display and notetaker and it is very responsive when used with a screen reader. Our regular listeners know from previous episodes that Mario is a musician and that he plays string instruments so he likes that the firmness of the dots can be adjusted on Focus 40.   NVDA 2019.3 is Out and it brings many new features, changes and bug fixes. Screen curtain and focus highlight are the default feature of NVDA now and you can predefine the shortcut in the input gestures menu. At the end of the episode you can hear our demo of the new features in NVDA. Note, however, that add-ons that were not updated to be compatible with the new NVDA will not work anymore and you can check the status on the NVDA add-ons repository. Mario shared with us a tip about the NVDA add-on updater that can automate the process and download updated NVDA add-ons for you.   The New, stable Chromium-based Microsoft Edge is Available And compatible with NVDA 2019.3 and JAWS 2020 February update. It starts with number 79 and it comes with the Windows update or you can download it as standalone installer. The new Edge is much more responsive, uses less resources, provides more shortcuts and the interface is very intuitive. You can check the information related to accessibility of the new Edge and the list of Edge shortcuts on the Microsoft page.   The Microsoft Accessibility Webinars demonstrate How To Use Various Microsoft applications With Assistive Technology. You can find 12 episodes from this sirie in the archive and we hope that Microsoft will do more similar webinars in the future for customers with disabilities.   Raspberry Pi Becomes More Accessible With The Addition of Orca screen reader.   APH announces new products: Chameleon 20 braille device which main purpose is to help blind students in tclassrooms, Mantis Q40 refreshable braille display combined with the querty keyboard, handheld video magnifier with OCR functionality and 2 different desktop braille embossers PixBlaster and PageBlaster that can print braile text and tactile graphics.   We shared with you the results of a study done in UK Regarding The Accessibility Of The Online Shopping Experience that shows that persons with disabilities find difficulties in buying online groceries, train tickets, clothing, ordering food delivery, booking rooms in hotels or finding information and purchasing tickets for leasure or sport activities.   Envision AI is coming to Google glasses with the known Envision AI features: OCR with TTS, scanning products, recognising images and the plan is to add new features like video calls. The interface will be accessible with a special screen reader done for this particular glasses. We hope that we will be able to test the product at special events dedicated to asssistive technologies for visually impaired persons in Europe.   Stay tuned with us! Send us comments or suggestions via Twitter or e-mail and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Welcome to the 18th EBU Access Cast! Since this is the first podcast for 2020, we wish you all the best in 2020 from the whole team, and we hope that you will get some nice new gadgets which will expand and improve your daily Living. We also made some improvements in our podcast since 2020, and that means from now on our podcast supports chapters Section, which means that if you want to listen something that specifically interests you, you can directly skip to your favorite chapter in your favorite podcast Player. The chapters do not work directly if you are listening the podcast from the web Player, therefore this is another reason why it is better to subscribe to our podcast directly from the podcast players such as Apple podcasts on iPhone or Podcast adict on Android platform. Now let’s jump into the news Section to see what we have prepared for you: This year CES 2020 was occupied by many more assistive technology vendors than on the previous CES events, which is absolutely a positive sign. Therefore we selected a few of the most interesting products which were shown for general public: First Braille tablet shown at CES 2020 While we don’t have too much technical information about the Tactile Pro, it is great to see that such devices are slowly getting into the mainstream and that braille as the most important form of written form for blind people is being updated into new device. Hap2Phone Allows Users to Feel Objects in Photos on Their Touchscreens Hap2U, a haptics developer specialized in integrating sensory intelligence into tactile surfaces, will unveil Hap2Phone, the world’s first haptic smartphone display, at CES 2020. While this device isn’t made for the end consumers, the concept of such a device might be very interesting for System integrators and OEM manufacturers. OrCam Announces New AI Hearing Device and Handheld AI Reader at CES 2020 OrCam is a known vendor from Israel. This time they decided to expand their product line towards the users with Hearing and reading problems with 2 new products. We don’t know what  the price of the products will be yet, however this does not mean that you should not visit their Stand on the upcoming assistive tech events such as the Sight City 2020 where you can try their products directly. W3C Launches an Introduction to Web Accessibility Free Online Course in Cooperation with UNESCO IITE On the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (UNESCO IITE) announced the launch of the online course built on the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) open curricula with international expert trainers from W3C Member organizations. [The MOOC begins on January 20, 2020.] How to make museums more accessible for disabled people? Ask them The Arches project took place in 6 different museums across Europe for the last 3 years and they came up with really interesting results which Pawel represented to us in the podcast. This time we prepared really cool news for visually impaired musicians: Building Raspberry Pi Smart Guitar for Blind, Deaf and Mute Musicians This really cool Instrument combines various tech solutions built into one device, allowing the users with seeing, Hearing or speech problems to use it as they wish. The users can choose to receive the information via built in small Display, read the information via built in braille Display or choose the built in buttons for going through the menus in the guitar, in case the users have speech problems which they can read thru the built in Display or hear it thru the built in Speaker. Avid and Berklee College of Music Team Up to Deliver Innovative Accessibility Features for Visually Impaired Music Creators Musicians who are visually impaired finally can get really excited, because Sibelius will become much more accessible for Jaws, NVDA and Voice over users in the near future. That means that the Level of integration will be much improved for students and musicians who need to utilize Sibelius for composing on the daily bases. For many years visually impaired community was struggling with accessibility of Sibelius which is in todays world one of the main tools used for composing and arranging, and it looks like that this will finally change. VIEWS International published the results of the VIPTech project, and Bart gave us more info about it. EUROPEAN DISABILITY FORUM AND ORACLE E-ACCESSIBILITY SCHOLARSHIP 2019-2020 If you are Student who is studding IT related subjects and if you are visually impaired you may want to apply to the following scolaireship till March 6th. Index Donation Program 2020 If your organisation is envolved with Braille literacy but you think that you are in need for a new braille printer you can apply to the following donation program and see if you wil be one of the winners. Applications are now open for the 2020 Holman Prize If you think that you are the next inventor who will change the future in our community, apply to the Holman Prize and get 25000 dollars. 2019 Holman Prize winner Yuma Decaux software engeneer, specialist in 3d and mixed media creating an app to enable blind citizen scientists to participate in the search for exoplanets by listening to space. Google Assistant Now Has Interpreter Mode on Android and iOS Devices We checked live in the podcast if the feature Works for the smartphones, and the result was very positive. Than we also checked if the same feature is available on the Android smartwatches, but weren’t sucsessful in getting it to work. That means that the smartwatch users will have to wäit a bit longer untill the interpretor arrives. However we were able to talk about another cool feature which allows all the users of Google Assistant to check their local air quality. IN order to activate it, just say “Talk to Air Quality Index”. After that the assistant will ask you for your location permmition, and after a few seconds you will get the results from the closest air quality measuring station. The last information for today Comes from Pawel who presented to us Z5NBY RetroArch 1.8.2 – Accessibility features for blind people. If you are a blind Gamer who likes the old style games like a final Fantasy this will be a great news for you, since you are able to play the game which you could not do it before. As always, we are here for you on our Twitter and e-mail so give us a Feedback about the last Episode, and we are looking forward to be back with you in February.

We are back with the latest episode of the EBU Access Cast and as it happens the last one for the year 2019 and the teens of this century. As Christmas is drawing closer, we began this episode with some tech gadget Christmas gifts discussion. Mario bought a Fossil 5 Gen Wear OS smartwatch and shared his experience of setting it up for the first time. His brief demo of this device's possibilities can be found in the demo Time section of this show.   We kicked off the news section by mentioning the winner of this year's Accessible City Award of the European Commission the Polish capital Warsaw. This was an opportunity for Paweł to tell a little bit about various initiatives, projects and good practices applied in the city to make it friendly for its visually impaired inhabitants. Among the projects discussed there was the Invisible Exhibition which explains life with blindness to sighted visitors, the social campaign "Path of Accessibility: Share Your Space" which raises awareness of issues connecting to navigating the public space of Warsaw by persons with visual impairments and the in-door and outdoor beacon-based orientation system Totupoint. You can learn more about the Accessible City Award by watching a described Video created by the European Commission in cooperation with the EBU represented by Tanja. WE returned to Seeing AI with its important update for many users across Europe as support for new languages is introduced. We then mentioned some good news for all of our musician listeners as the Musescore music notation software adds new accessibility features and SM music Reader, the first Android and in general mobile app for accessible reviewing and drawing of music notes appears on the market. Coming back to Poland for a while, Paweł shared an example of a good accessibility practice introduced by one of the local operators of self-service package pick-up stations. This was not the only accessibility innovation in terms of self-service devices that we discussed as we also delved into what manufacturers of touchscreen-based payment terminals do to allow operation by blind customers. Valina and Pax A920 will be one of the first solutions to tackle this challenge. New year is the time of resolutions and decisions to do something different. WE bring you some inspiration with BeMyEyes's hand-picked list of accessible museum and art experiences, most of them located in Europe. If you prefer consuming different forms of art from the comfort of your house, we also took a look at See, one of Apple's exclusive TV shows available for their brand-new streaming platform Apple TV Plus. The show takes place in a world inhabited by a population where almost everyone is blind. We invite you to hear and read how it is like directing an action-packed show with blind actors in cast and consulted in close cooperation with blindness organizations. Before concluding the show we also talked about one of EBU's current campaigns focused on the Marrakesh Treaty, European Accessibility Act and the accessibility in the book publishing industry. We will hear more on the matter from Antoine Fobe from the EBU who will be interviewed by Tanja. Remember that you can send us your comments and suggestions through our email and Twitter. WE will be happy to hear them. Last but not least, we at the EBU Access Cast would like to wish all of our listeners  a merry Christmas and all the best  for the year 2020. May all of your plans and goals come to fruition and new ones come to mind.

The European Blind Union held its 11th general assembly in Rome on October 27-30. Bart was invited to record a special edition of the podcast. He spoke with the outgoing and incoming president of EBU, Wolfgang Angermann, and Rodolfo Cattani, as well as  with its executive director Mokrane Boussaïd who is about to retire. He also interviewed the exhibitors in the tech fair. Companies that we interviewed at Sightcity were not revisited.   It Cares developed an app for the purpose of this event. They used their platform Pharoart that allows clients to quickly build an accessible native Android and iPhone application.   JKJ sells tactile pavings with integrated RFID tags. An electronic stick communicates the information in the tag to the LVE System app on your smart phone.   Letismart is another way to make the white cane smart. A smart city with beacons can help you navigate and interact with smart devices around you.   In Bologna, Ancona and Catania you can visit a tactile museum: Museo Anteros and Museo Tolomeo, and Museo Omero and Polo tattile Multimediale The latter also houses a braille transcription center.   Tactile books can also be bought from La Federazione Nazionale delle Istituzioni pro Ciechi   Discover astronomy and learn everything about the earth, moon, sun and other planets with the hand made educational tools of the Associazione Pontina di Astronomia   Dolphin Computer Access produces Supernova (screenreader and magnification software for Windows), Guide Connect (providing access to Windows application through a standardised interface) and Easyreader (a free smartphone app to read Daisy online content from libraries all over the world).   En-Vision America demonstrates the ScripTalk station and ScripTalk app to listen to medical prescriptions, given that your pharmacist encoded the information in a label, glued on the medicine package.   Nattiq Technologies from Dubai builds customised braille products. A braille display and a Windows computer in one box. You provide the specifications and they build it for you.   Harpo demonstrates the new Mountbatten Brailler named Tutor and PIAF for tactile images.   Humanware produces portable magnifiers, Daisy players (with GPS) and braille displays that also can function as a note taker running on Android.   Index Braille sells four types of braille embossers. Their CEO explaines the differences and what software you can use to prepare the files before embossing.   EasyTv is a project that will increase the availability of audio description and captioning by trying to automate the production:   The assembly was held with the generous support of Google.   If you have  any Feedback about this Episode you can contact us on our e-mail or send us a tweet on our Twitter account. The next Standard Episode of the EBU Access Cast will be back with you in December.

Welcome to the 15th episode of the EBU Access Cast. This month we commented the iOS 13 accessibility improvements and new bugs that came with the new iOS. We are disappointed that the official release brought so many accessibility issues and we hope that Apple will fix them soon. Microsoft announced Surface Neo and Surface Duo at the Microsoft Surface event. What came as a surprise is that the smaller foldable Surface Duo runs Android, and, the larger device Surface Neo will run a variant of the company's operating system Windows X. In that occasion Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Windows will not be the most important layer - the focus will now be on applications and services. Time will tell how this will reflect the further development of the Windows operating system. The Microsoft's Seeing AI application has gotten some significant updates over the last months and we are happy that we are now able to choose the OCR language on the short text channel or to create a Siri voice shortcut to open the application on a specific channel. More about the recent updates can be read in the changelog on the Appstore page. Similarly, Seeing Assistant Home by Transition Technologies S.A. has gotten some notable updates, namely it now introduces an automatic barcode reading mode where for previously assigned codes, the label is read automatically without displaying the HTML window (for iOS and Android) and a text recognition mode was added (iOS exclusive so far). The significant thing with the text recognition is that it boasts three modes depending on how small or big the area containing the text is so it is well-suited for reading text out of tiny LCD screens or CD covers, for example. The results for the WebAim screen Reader User Survey #8 are published. We are aware that the survay does not represent the choice of all users and that the survey is available only in English and it excludes non-English speaking users. However the survey shows the trends in the usage of screen readers and the results are often used as a reference point by the industry. JAWS public beta 2020 is available and the full release will be launched at the end of October. Despite high quality voices many of us prefer to listen Eloquence and have used the voice on the Android operating system. Unfortunately the Eloquence voice has been abandoned and it will not be available anymore on the Google appstore. Code Factory informed the users by e-mail and we are transmitting the entire message here. Start of quote Dear Code Factory friends, We would like to announce the end of life of one of our products: Eloquence for Android. As you may know, Google now requires that applications using native code (such as ours) provide a 64-bit version of its binaries. Eloquence has a very old code base, and the effort required to port it to 64 bits has been evaluated and unfortunately, the app sales do not justify this investment. This does not affect our other Android products, such as Vocalizer for Android, for which we already provide a 64 bit version. Also, this does not affect Voices for NVDA (which includes Eloquence) on Windows. We also want to make it clear that those users who have purchased the application will be able to continue using it, as per Google Play's policies. Also, we will continue to provide support for this application through our Help Desk. However, as of today, no new updates to Eloquence for Android can be published. Here you can find some more details on Google's policies: 64-bit Requirement: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/01/get-your-apps-ready-for-64-bit.html   Download purchased apps (even if they are no longer published): https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/113410?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid   It's been a great 6 years of development for this application. It's a shame that Eloquence for Android has not reached the amount of interest and sales that we hoped for. Best wishes, -- Xavi Martínez Software developer End of quote   The European Web Accessibility Directive applies and websites of the public sector bodies need to meet the accessibility standards. If this is not the case in your country, fill out the EDF survey and help them to identify the issues. A team of IT specialists in Vienna made available the source code and patterns for 3D printing a magnet-based braille keyboard that can be attached at the back of any smartphone. Voice guidance in Google Maps, built for people with impaired vision  became available for now for users in USA and Japan APH announced a big update for users of their NearBy Explorer application which will allow the users to use their GPS navigational app with Open Street Maps instead of Navtech Maps which they previously used   If you want to play UNO, you can now do it with the new Braille UNO cards. As useful gadget of the month, we recommend you the cell phone lanyard holder on which you can attach your phone and use it hands free. The case can be purchased in any shop that sells camera and phone accessories. At the end of the episode you can hear our demo for the Advanced Braille Keyboard for Android. If you have any Feedback for us, send us your comments or suggestions via our Twitter page or e-mail and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Welcome to the 14th EBU AccessCast! (September 2019) After our summer holidays Mario, Tanja, Bart and Pawel are back with you and as always, we have quite a lot to say for this month. Bart got himself a new pair of Bose frames which represent the alternative to the well-known aftershockz boan conduction headset, and he shared his Short Review on them. Mario also bought a new tuner for string instruments, called Roadie Bass. The tuner is very accessible for partially sighted community as well as blind musicians, because the end user is able to make all the presets thru an app on the phone, and then sync all the settings with the tuner via bluetooth. After the settings are synced, all you have to do is turn on the tuner, choose your setting for the particular Instrument, and the robotic part will automatically tune each of the strings on the Instrument in very Short time. In the news Section we prepared the following for you: Apple just released a bunch of their new products including new iPhones 11, Applewatch 5, new Ipads and news for gamers as well as new subscriptions for Apple arcade. Applevis made nice recap of the eventwhich you can find on the following page. The LEGO Group to pilot LEGO® Audio & Braille instructions To hear more about Matthew Shifrin, main person behind the Lego braille instructions project, watch the following presentation from Ted Talks. Audio described content plays a big role in the life of blind or partially sighted people. Therefore this time we found 2 different very similar topics launched in different parts of the world which are working thru todays most used Video platform in the world. Sure enough, we are talking about Youtube. You Describe platform collects audio described Youtube videos made by volunteers In the Nederlands scribit.tv provides a very similar Service as youdescribe platform, available for Dutch blind users. New OCR and object recognition free Android app called Speak! Started to gain a lot of attention from the community, We are bringing you the demo of the app at the end of the  podcast so if you are the Android user this is definitely a nice app to have on your smartphone since it has many functionalities of the Seeing AI which is for now available only for iOS users. EBU published a report on 'Most frequent problems experienced by blind and partially sighted persons when travelling by planes which we are sharing with you and we hope that you will share it further. If you are planning to travel and in the same time you have some kind of disability, than check out the Accessible travelling guide from Lonely Planet. Last but not least, check out the page about new plans for new European disability strategy which is starting from 2020, and will last for the next 10 years. Therefore you have the time until the October 23rd to write your Opinion what can be improved to make our life better across whole European Union. At the end Mario prepared for you the demo of the mentioned Speak app which you can listen to. At the end Mario prepared for you the demo of the above-mentioned Speak app which you can listen, and comment. If you have any Feedback for us, send us your suggestions or other questions, via our Twitter page or e-mail and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Welcome to the 13th episode of the EBU Access Cast, this time hosted by Paweł who is joined by Tanja, Mario and Bart to discuss all that happened in July in assistive technologies. Paweł got himself a new iPod Touch 7th gen and is yet again ready to explore the accessibility of the Apple ecosystem and iOS apps alongside his usual Android phone. Meanwhile Tanja had the chance to speak in front of a large publicity of web developers conference Voxxed Days which took place in Luxembourg. Her presentation was well-received and even met with some social media attention as many of the attendees tweeted about it. Check it out for yourself and watch it here. BeMyEyes has opened up its specialized help network to users all around the world. Google and Careline are the first two companies to be made available globally, however they are reachable only in English and during the US working hours. Google is back with plenty of news on their side as they release Chrome 75 to the public, boasting their long-awaited, AI-based image description feature. From the preliminary tests it seems to be working quite well, apart from that, users started noticing that it is now possible to turn accessibility services on their Android devices on and off using Google Assistant. Germany is launching a state-wide app allowing to request help in case of emergency through text messaging beginning 2020. The app will also share the location so that the operators know where to dispatch the necessary help. The app may be an answer to the upcoming European Accessibility Act, giving those with speech impairments access to the emergency helplines. Read more about it in the original article (in German) here. Listeners are also encouraged to share examples of how accessibility improves in their countries. We will be glad to include them in our next episodes. Gatwick Airport has received an award for the most accessible airport. The features highlighted were the availability of assistance material in braille, special buttons allowing to call for assistance and their involvement in training their staff and stakeholders in assisting passengers with disabilities. Bologne was another airport highlighted for their outstanding care about accessibility needs. This mention gave the team the opportunity to share their experiences regarding assistance at different airports in Europe. Apple has applied for a patent within which a solution should be developed allowing the blind to spatially explore maps and learn about their surroundings in this way. The user should be able to experience the road ahead from A to B by just moving the finger across the screen. Apple plans also to introduce accessibility into the 3D representation of the area. A new version of NVDA, 2019.2 is approaching with a handful of long-awaited features. For one, braille users should be happy to see the Freedom Scientific displays being automatically detected and certain advanced settings of individual displays can be handled from within the settings interface. Another welcome change is the ability to give the Microsoft voices a rate boost and the ability to assign individual keyboard shortcuts to different settings’ profiles. From 1st July 2019, newly produced electric and hybrid cars are required to include an AVAS system which will alert passersby about the car’s presence. This change is a result of a long-standing EBU Silent Cars campaign which was already mentioned in the previous episodes of the podcast. Tanja interviewed Jessica Schroeder of the DBSV asking about the implications and limitations of this regulation. We also present samples of how AVAS systems might sound like in a Jaguar and Nissan car. The show is concluded by the demo of the Voice OCR app done by Tanja. The app has recently received a significant update and is now delivering promising results . You can read about the recent changes here. As always, we encourage you to contact us, either on our Twitter or our email and look forward to connecting with you again in the September episode, as August is the holiday season for the team.

Welcome to the 12 episode of the EBU Access Cast. We decided to refresh the way how our podcast is presented, so from now on every month you will hear somebody different from our team who will be the main host for the episode. In the June episode Tanja took the position of the captain and she is joined by Mario, Bart and Pawel who became our newest team member. This time we are bringing you the accessibility news from the Apple conference WWDC 2019. In its opening Apple announced that technology is the most powerfull when everyone can use it and they showed clearly their commitment by presenting plenty of new accessibility functionalities on Apple devices that we can expect from this autumn. Starting from iOS13 and iPadOs the accessibility menu will be moved from the general settings to the top level settings which clearly shows the importance that Apple gives to accessibility. The feature that received most attention is the full voice control that will be available starting from MacOSCatalina and iOS13. The feature is ment for persons with motor disabilities, but this is another functionality that everyone can benefit from. Read more on the Apple VIS blog and listen to the Apple VIS podcast with Sarah Herrlinger, Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple and Dean Hudson, Accessibility Evangelist at Apple. Another functionality that we are looking forward is the automatic recognition of unlabeled buttons in inaccessible apps. Custom gestures, a feature that we know from other screen readers, will be available in VoiceOver and will allow easier access to predefined functions. Liblouis will be supported on all Apple devices and the response time for braille screen typing will be increased for those who type in braille very fast. Low vision users will benefit from hover text functionality that will allow to enlarge the selected area on the screen. The major news for Apple WatchOS 6 is that applications can run independently from the iPhone and it will have its own Appstore. Applications for listening audiobooks, voice memo, calculator and other interesting applications in the health section will be available from the WatchOS6. Check out the keynote on Youtube Microsoft released the 1903 spring update with several accessibility improvements in Narrator, for the full list check out the Windows 10 help forum Talking about accessibility and screen readers on Windows, the Vispero Group just launched the June JAWS update and the list of improvements is available on the Freedom Scientific webpage Automatic image recognition is becoming much better and accurate as we move forward, therefore mobile application TapTapSee that most of us used some years ago brings a new, completely AI-based image recognition. The quality of descriptions will be much more accurate and the recognition will be faster. We tested the Clew application that serves for path retracing in the indoor navigation, it is available only for iOS devices and it uses Apple ARKit and camera to understand the surrounding. While the accuracy of the application is very high in the current version, we found out that the next update will provide the functionality to save the recorded path and we hope that the list of features will be extended to help visually impaired persons to orientate more easily in an unknown indoor environment. At the end of our episode listen to the interview that we made with Feelif and discover a new way of experiencing shapes and images by haptics and sound. As always feel free to leave us a comment or suggestion on our Twitter account or by e-mail and we are looking forward to be back with you in July.

Wellcome to the 11th EBU Access Cast. This time we have a special episode on Sight City 2019 and we talk about all interesting tech goodies we saw at the conference. At the beginning of the episode you can listen to the interviews which Mario and Tanja prepared, and than after Mario, Tanja, Bart and our special guest Paweł Masarczyk  who is very known podcaster from Poland in the Tyflopodcast discuss all about the things they saw at the Sight City. The first interview comes from Vispero group where Jan Blum presented to us what's new with all series of their products such as JAWS, Zoom, Fusion, and also Focus Blue braille displays 5g: 14, 40 and 80 characters. Jan also informed us about Omni reader: scanning and reading device as well as the products from Optelec Germany: video magnifier CCTV device with 16 inch screen. In the second interview we spoke with Mr Siegfried Kipke, CEO of Help Tech that is for many listeners better known as former Handy Tech which is a very good German manufacturer of braille devices. The products demonstrated in this interview were Actilino, portable and compact braille notetaking device with 16 ergonomic concaved braille cells, unique functions such as detection of the reading positioning, bluetooth connectivity with up to 4 different devices in the same time for transferring files or to use it as a braille display, magnetic USB connection, 16 gb of storage and support for SD cards plus standard lithium batteries which are possible to find in todays smartphones. We also spoke about Active Braille and Active Star braille devices, and we had a chance to see the new Active Braille Plus with 40 cells which has similar functionalities as Actilino, but with aditional 40 braille sells, and new rabber keys which make this unit really very quiet when typing. In addition, it supports Kindle and Kindle Fire HD  devices and the plan is to add the support for the Amazon's Alexa assistant. Our next visit was at the Kanematsu corporation booth and we spoke with the manager Mr. Tetsuo Takamatsu about their new product called TactPlus. TactPlus  is a product from Japan and it represents the first braille and 3d image printer which uses thermal printing on capsule paper. It has only 5 kg and it has the same size as a standard Inkjet printer. We were standing closely while the printer was working and we couldn’t hear any noise coming out from it. In fact our opinion is that this is the most silent braille printer that we herd so far, and we were very positively surprised by the quality of the embossed graphics and braille text. Another very good product which we demonstrated in the next interview is BraiBook and it comes from Spain. It is the first portable braille book reader with only 1 braille cell that has a size of a computer mouse. The cell can be refreshed at the desired speed which can be adjusted with a little joystick located on the left side of the device. Mr. Eric Sicard showed us the product and he explained to us that BraiBook supports currently 40 languages which are provided via the open source Liblouis braille translator, and that it also provides the text-to-speech functionality for users who want to read it via TTS through additional headphone jak. With 64 gb of internal memory, users have more than enough space to store thousands of ebooks in various formats such as Epub, PDF or TXT files and read it on the go. In few minutes we were able to get the unit going along and read the text very fast. The APH booth was very busy with the demonstration of their new products, and one of them which we saw in action was Code Jumper for which we can't wait the official release in Europe. As you will hear from our comments later in the episode, the rest of our team is also very happy with Code Jumper and our opinion is that the product has very bright future in the blindness community. Besides Code Jumper we  also saw BrailleBuzz which is really cool gadget for very young blind students who are just starting to learn braill. Speaking of braille devices, on the APH stand they presented also the Braile Trail, 14 cell braille display which is produced by HumanWare. Another company which is bringing lot of attention for last few years comes from Korea, and it is possible to see them almost on every assistive technology conference. They are called Dot incorporation, so we went to see what do they have in store for us this time. We were able to see the Dot Watch which was previously mentioned in our episodes, but we were also able to see the brand new low cost braille reader Dot Mini. It has 16 braille cels and built in speaker, Dot Mini represents modern reading unit and portable Braille display for blind people. The unit has also TTS support as well as the support for Daisy format, support for SD cards, USB and Bluetooth. Besides all the things we mentioned, we saw a bunch of other things for which we didn't have the time to do the interviews such as meteg product: 2 dimentional graphic braille display, Tactonom by Inventivio and Seika braille displays by Nippon Telesoft. Another cool thing which we mentioned in the later section of the podcast which we saw was the washing machine that has buttons with tactile markings. The buttons are also touch sensitive and by touching them will produce a sound to distinguish the number of the turns in the spin cycle or the desired temperature in a predefined program. The washing machine is designed to be accessible to visually impaired and it is manufactured by Miele. Miele started to make home appliances with universal design in mind since 2007, and on the next link you can read more information about it. Pawel saw also an interesting product from Italy called FelixPhone, which is bringing another adopted smartphone for blind people, Mediavoice - Speaky Facile, the device which connects thru your smart TV, and Bruno, the reading Machine for low vision and blind people. Last year the EBU Access Cast was launched on the Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Therefore at the end of this episode we tell you why this day is inportant for our community and we are sharing with you a short but very informative article about it. We hope that this episode was interesting to you and that we were able to bring at least a small piece of many different things which were possible to see and experience on this years Sight City. As always you are free to leave us the comments and the suggestions on our e-mail and Twitter and we're looking forward to be back with you in June.

Welcome to the 10th EBU Access Cast. We are extremely happy that our podcast reached the 10th Episode so far, and we hope that we will keep you interested in the future as well. For you this time Mario, Jakob and Tanja prepared lots of goodies and Bart was very busy with preparing 3 nice interviews which you can listen in the second half of this Episode. But before the interviews, let's check what's new in the news Section. New option called accessibility events appeared under accessibility settings in the newest version for Voice Over users on Mac and iOS. While potentially this can be a nice feature which could help developers to detect that the user is using assistive Technologies on their web sites, the option is concerned as a privacy issue for some users. Another very nice app called Voice Dream Scanner which is able to do very good and fast OCR recognition recently appeared on the appstore, so Jakob told us his Opinion about it. You can check out more here and listen to a podcast with demonstration of the Voice Dream Scanner. New update for NVDA appeared as well from NVAccess, and this time it fixes a few bugs found in the original NVDA 2019.1 version. Android Accessibility Suite 7.3 adds Screen Search, more continuous reading options. Next month many Europeans will vote on the European elections. However when we talk about persons with dissabilities, we have to make sure that the voting system in each countrey is accessible so we can participate in the elections as everyone else. Jakob, Mario, Tanja and Bart share their experiences about it from their perspective, and we are also bringing to you further links in the shownotes about this particular topic: EBU Statement on the European elections 2019 A fundamental right to vote: Removing barriers for people with disabilities EDF recommends 10 REASONS TO VOTE IN THE EUROPEAN ELECTIONS to persons with disabilities EDF petition European elections for all Last month in our previous episode, we covered the European Accessibility Act which in the meantime was adopted by the European Council. Next week, some of us will visit Sight City, the biggest exhibition for assistive tech products in Europe, and we hope to bring you nice interviews from there. Click here to know more about Sight City. Bart prepared 3 interviews for us this time: Interview with Susanna Laurin, recorded at the 11th edition of the Funka Accessibility Days in Stockholm: Susanna Laurin on Twitter: Interview with Saqib Shaikh, main person behind Seeing AI app, recorded at an accessibility summit organised by Microsoft in Brussels. Saqib Shaikh on Twitter: Interview with Jarnail Chudge, main person behind the Soundscapes app, recorded at an accessibility summit organised by Microsoft in Brussels: Jarnail Chudge on Twitter We are always happy to receive new contributions and suggestions from you, so if you got any comments or suggestions for us, contact us thru our e-mail link or send us a tweet on the Ebuaccesscast Twitter.  

Wellcome to the Ebu Access Cast 09. As you will see March was very busy month for many updates in the assistive tech industry, as well as in the European Union which are very important for visually impaired community. Jakob, Mario and Tanja this time prepared many news, demos and the first guest interview for our podcast, so let's jump straight into the action and check what do we have in store for you this time. At the beginning all of us shared the news about our new gadgets, which we will show thru the demos during this and the future episodes for you. However, before we show you the stuff from our virtual playground, let's see which news do we have:   Seeing AI got new March update with few very interesting features among which we would recommend  detection of  objects on the pictures. If you stay untill the end of the episode, you will be able to hear how that sounds in the demo section. It seams that image recognition thru the artificial intelligence is slowly but surely becoming the trend  inside of the assistive tech. Why do we say that? Because Vispero Group prepared new JAWS update for March, and one of its many features is also the possibility of recognising the images. If you haven't updated your version of JAWS for Windows, right now is ideal time to do it. Spring has come for NVDA users as well because new release 2019.1 just saw the light of day, with almost 50 different improvements since the last official version. Besides many new features added, we would like to point out improved support for MS Office products, especially Office 2016 and Office 365. If you are using one of those products, please test the newest version of NVDA and let us know how do you like it. Smart devices can be used for many different things, and playing games is definitely one of them. While many sighted people play lots of games on their smart devices, with blind and visually impaired population this is not the case unless the games are designed with accessibility in mind. This time, we bring to you the article about designing and finding the games for Android platform.  If you are happy owner of Google Home check out the following article about possible games which you can play on it. Many people with different tipes of dissabilities will be happy to hear that European Accessibility Act is behind the corner. Therefor, we are bringing to you news from the European Parliament about it. The end of February brought up an very interesting article from European Disability Forum with a detailed study about the state of digital accessibility of public government websites  around Europe. Unfortunately, European Parliament didn't show up as the best student in class this time. Living in the smart city can be great if you are not a  person with disability. However if you have some kind of special needs, than you might find that smart cities can be nice, but also very lousy. If you are interested to know more about current and future developments and initiatives about smart and accessible cities in Europe, check out the following article:   If you think that you herd everything well than you are very very wrong, because we brought up the first interview for the Ebu Access Cast. We Sat down with Alejandro Moledo from European Disability Forum and talked about the upcoming European Accessibility Act as well as current state of the accessibility of the websites of the European governments. Once more we would like to say a huge thank you for explaining everything to our listeners. We look forward to have you again in the future shows for the upcoming topics. At the end of this episode Jakob Rosin prepared 2 demos for you, The first is short coverage of KOBOLD VR200 ROBOT vacume cleaner, and second talks about new improvements in Seeing AI.   Do you think you have something to say, well don't be afraid, send us an e-mail or drop us the tweet on our Ebu Access Cast twitter page. We will be back with you in April, but untill than be happy and safe!

Wellcome to the 8th episode of the Ebu Access Cast. This time Mario, Jakob, Bart and Tanja prepared lots of goodies for you from the news section, and we achieved our own personal record in amount of demos prepared for our podcast. We would like to say a huge thank you to Mr. Daniel Montalvo who send to us 2 demos about amazon Echo which we are publishing in this episode, and you can hear also the demo about Google Interpreter at the end of this podcast. But first, let's see what do we have in stock from the news section: Vispero group prepared for us new January update for Jaws 2019, and here you can see What's new in the newest update: Mario informed the listeners that NVDA 2019.1 is being in development and which changes can be expected in the official release. If you would like to test the newest NVDA releases head over to their Snapshots page and download your copy. However be prepared that their snapshot releases are being updated on the daily bases and that the code can be sometimes unstable, but that is always the case with beta software packages. We warned you in advance, so if something gets broken on your machine, don't blame us

Wellcome to the 7th Ebu Access Cast, the first episode for 2019. We decided to make some changes and refresh our team with new people. Therefor from now on we have new person who will bring a girl power into our team. We wish warm wellcome to Tanja Kleut who is an accessibility specialist at the European parliament, and who joined Mario and Jakob in this episode. At the beginning we gave a small round up on the gadgets which each of us got for the holidays. Jakob got him self a paire of the Aftershokz Trekz Air and Mario shared a small tip for all the listeners how to engage the Equalizer settings on the Aftershokz boan conduction headsets which dramatically improve the over all sound of the headset. Mario got him self a new Cubot King Kong 3, very interesting Android smartphone which has military-grade standards and which is 100% accessible to blind and partially sighted population. Tanja got her self the Sunu band for which she herd from our podcast. This time in the news section we covered quite a lot of different things. CES 2019 the biggest Consumer Electronics Show was held just recently in Las Vegas, and among different things which are being presented every year, the accessible products have their space as well. We selected a few for you which we found interesting: WeWALK 'Smart' Cane For People With Visual Impairments got the attention this year. Since the device is very similar to the Sunu band which we previously covered in our podcast, we said that it would be great to have the smart ccane tested in the future and compare it with the Sunu band. VisionCheck, a paire of new glasses which are able to test your vision at home were also shown at the CES, so if anybody got the chance to try the paire, we would like to get the feedback for them. Google Assistant’s new Interpreter Mode turns Google Home, Smart Displays into a translation tool. UP untill this point we couldn't try the feature on our Google home devices because it is still not available in Europe, so we can't wait to get the feature available in the future updates of the Google Home app. The Paciello Group published their blog post about the CES 2019 and what they found interesting there, so we are bringing it to you as the easy read for long winter nights. Except the CES, a cupple of other accessible tech gadgets cought our attention as well: Cash Reader, the application for money identification just got released in the last previous weeks, and the app is getting lots of positive feedback from the visually impaired community for a few particular reasons. First, the app is covering more than 20 different currencies at this moment. Also it does not need internet connection to recognise the bils, it can also announce the ammount of money identified in silent mode, and all users who want to try the application can test it for the period of 2 weeks for free and the app will work in full mode. Currently Cash Reader is available for iOS devices and the Android version is coming out in the next few weeks. Breda wins 2019 Access City Award for making the city more accessible to citizens with disabilities. Nobody from our team visited Breda, but since we know that we have the listeneres from the Nederlands we'd like to hear your opinion about it. We also shortly talked about the accessibility status of our cities, so if you would like to give us the opinion about the public accessibility of your city, you are more than wellcome to do it and we wil publish it in our podcast. On the January 4th we celebrated the Worlds Braille day. Therefor we talked about the inportance of knowing Braille and what's going on in the modern ICT industry regarding various Braille devices, and what are the trends today regarding the Braille production. Bristol Braille Technology: is putting Canute, the world's first multi-line digital Braille e-reader into the production this year. Canute is another device which is gaining lot of attention at this moment, and besides being the first multi-line digital Braille e-reader, it falls into the category of very affordable devices such as the Orbit reader 20 which was just launched a few months ago. For the end of the podcast Tanja shared some accessibility news as well. Updated and harmonised EU Standards for public procurement of ICT products and services are available.24 accessibility recommendations from accessibility experts This time we didn't have the time for any recorded tips or tutorials for you because there was a lot of stuff to cover but we will be back with it next month for sure. As always you are free to send us e-mail or drop us a Tweet on our official Twitter page. We are looking forward to be back with you next month.

Wellcome to the 6th episode of the Ebu Access Cast. As this is our last episode before we go on the short vacation, we would like to wish you all the best for the upcoming holidays, and that Mr Santa brings to you a bunch of the assistive tech devices and gadgets under the Christmas tree. IN the news section this time we got the following for you:   Instagram is Becoming More Accessible for the Visually Impaired With Two New Features   The following is a follow up article about current status of the social media accessibility:   NVDA 2018.4rc2 Released   In the mean time before we published our current episode , we found out that the official version of NVDA 2018.4 was released, and therefor you can check it here:     Microsoft Edge: Making the web better through more open source collaboration   More technical detailed explanation from Microsoft on the new transition for the Edge browser     Skype launches real-time captions and subtitles     Microsoft published complete Guide for people who are blind or low vision for Windows 10 and Office   Welcome to the new Standard keyboard layout for Narrator   Free introductory webinar for Office 365 with Jaws   New  documentary about digital accessibility in the European Parliament is out and you can watch it here:   Jakob and Mario are recommending a few gadgets to purchase for the Christmas, and for the end of the podcast Mario shared the audio tip for Android users how to turn off Picture in picture mode which can be a litle frustrating when Android is being used from the blindness prospective.   As always, our e-mail is always open for the feedback from our listeners, and you can also send us the Tweet on our EBUaccesscast Twitter account. We are looking forward to be back with you in January, but  til than, enjoy in our last episode for this year, and have a wonderfull holidays!

Welcome to the newest and fifth episode of the Ebu Access Cast. After one month period of silence during October due to a few technical problems and the Jakobs trip to Amazonian forests, we are back to bring you the newest content from around the globe from the assistive industry, and boy boy, we have a lot of interesting things to say this time. If you stay with us until the end of the news announcements, you will be able to hear our surprise demonstration about the new product, which is hitting our blindness, and sight impaired community like a storm these days. We received our first contribution from one of our listeners from Denmark which means that our podcast is being listened and followed, so we'd like to say once more thank you, Keep sending us your feedback, we are looking to expand our podcast even more in the future.   In the news section, first Jakob informs us about new software update for the Orcam, which brings new voice commands, new language support and Bluetooth connectivity. If you would like to know more about the Orcam follow the next link.   GE and Alexa Work Together to Create a Voice-Controlled Microwave with Scan to Cook Technology, and Mario tells us a bit more about it   Beginning of November started with the newest updates for Jaws 2019 as well as Fusion and Zoomtext. To read what's new for Jaws users follow this link: Mario and Jakob are also mentioning why it is important to keep our screen readers up to date, and why new Jaws 2019 is much faster than the previous versions on the web as well as in the Office applications.   Good independence in orientation and mobility is very important for blind or visually impaired person. However, when new GPS technological solutions are used properly with the aids such as white Cane or a guide dog, our independence can be increased even further. Therefore, Mario informs our listeners what's new for the last few weeks in the Lazarillo application, available for the iOS and Android platform, and why the application works much better now when used in the walking mode, which is used for the pedestrian navigation.   The last thing for the end of this episode is the demonstration, which we received from Jesper Holten who is accessibility consultant for the Danish association of the blind. The demonstration talks about the Sunu band. Using radar and augmented reality, Sunu Band enables people who are low vision and blind to travel with confidence. Advanced haptic feedback guides your way around any obstacle, and navigation sensors connect you to the world that’s around you. Designed for when you can’t easily use sight or due to a vision impairment, Sunu Band enables you to walk and travel with confidence. Sunu Band is the only smart-band that guides your way around obstacles. It uses sonar or echolocation to detect objects up to 16 feet or 5.5 meters away. Then haptic vibration feedback informs how close (or far away) you are to obstacles. Sunu Band compliments the white cane, guide dog or low vision. This smart-band augments your personal awareness, and reduces accidents to the body, chest, arms and head. Sunu Band is the only intelligent travel aid with more built-in sensors than any other device in the market. Explore and navigate unfamiliar places with Sunu Band’s haptic compass, place finder/explorer and GPS navigation app. Now you can enjoy the personal freedom of always knowing where you are, what’s around you, and how to get there with Sunu Band.   As always, we love to get your feedback, so if you have anything to say to us, send us an e-mail to ebu@euroblind.org or give us a tweet on our EBUaccesscast twitter account.

Welcome to our newest episode of the Ebu Access Cast. After very hot summer, our team is back with the newest news reports from the assistive tech industry. However before we get into the newest updates we would like to notify our listeners that from now on our podcast is available on the iTunes as well, so anyone who is using their favourite Apple gadget or smart speaker such as Google Home is finally able to hear us and listen to our show when and where ever you want. To find us on the iTunes you can visit the following link:   On September 12th, Apple had their 2018 event where many news about new Apple devices were announced. Besides launch of new hardware products, we also saw new update for the iOS 12, which brings new accessibility improvements. Jakob for this episode told us about what’s new for the Voice Over users, and here is the full list of the accessibility features expected for this release. You can also visit the newest The Blind Side podcast to hear recap of the newest Apple event with the accessibility prospective in mind.   While we recorded our last episode we announced the release of NVDA 2018 3RC3 which was last release candidate version before the official 2018.3 version. Highlights of this release include automatic detection of many Braille displays, support for new Windows 10 features including the Windows 10 Emoji input panel, and many other bug fixes. However just as we prepared our shownotes for this episode we discovered that day ago official 2018.3.1 officially got released, so if you want to grab it go here and download it.   On September 23rd, European Web accessibility directive will officially become new standard in Europe for public sector web sites. Therefor-new WCAG 2.1 guidelines are starting to be adopted across Europe. Shadi Abou-Zahra wrote an excellent article about it which you can read it here.   Since we can’t finish the episode without the review of some assistive tech products, this time Bart told us the news and his opinion about the Dot watch, which represents the first smart watch equipped with Braille, sells instead of the typical talking watch environment for blind people. As always we are always opened for the comments and suggestions from you, so if you want to drop us anything interesting including something we missed out you can contact us thru our Twitter or send us email on ebuaccesscast@euroblind.org

Welcome to the third episode of the Ebu Access Cast, our official podcast from EBU about assistive technology for blind and partially sighted population across the Europe. In our final episode before the summer break Jakob Rosin and Mario Percinic are joined by Bart Simons from Belgium as our third member of the team who gave us one more opinion opinion about the upcoming stories which we prepared for you this time.   Apple Developing Device and Wearable to Help Deaf and Blind Travelers How Android Phone Users Can Send Text Messages from Any Computer Portugal First in EU to Include Braille on Passports TalkBack App Renamed to Android Accessibility Suite in Recent Update Using AI to empower people with disabilities   Last but not least, Mario gave us a short demonstration of "ACUSTICA - The Swiss Watch for all senses". You can checkout more information about the watch and how to purchase it from their official web site.   For any comments and the suggestions you can write to us on ebuaccesscast@euroblind.org or send us a Tweet on our official Twitter. We are looking forward to being back with many news and updates in September.

Welcome to our second episode of the Ebu Access Cast. Our hosts Mario Percinic and Jakob Rosin prepared a bunch of news from the assistive tech industry, and at the end of the Podcast, you will be able to hear a short demonstration about Google Home. But first let’s check what news do we have for you this time:   Microsoft launched new version of Windows 10 for all members of their Windows Insiders program, and the version is called Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17692.  Except many new improvements for all users, a few accessibility related topics are covered as well. Ease of Access has a new feature for partially sighted users so that all the content can be bigger; Narrator has a new list of keyboard layout, which you can find here: Besides new keyboard layout Narrator now supports Automatic Dialog Reading: Narrator will now automatically read the contents of a dialog box when brought to the foreground.  The experience is for Narrator to speak the title of the dialog, the focused element within the dialog and the static text, if any, at the top of the dialog. For example, if you try to close a document in Word with unsaved changes, Narrator will speak the title “Microsoft Word,” the focus “Save button” and the static text within the dialog. Narrator Find: You now have the ability to search for text using Narrator’s new Find feature. If the text is found Narrator will move to the found item. Please refer to the accompanying keyboard layout documentation for command mapping. List of Objects: Narrator now has the ability to present a list of links, headings or landmarks present in the application or content. You are also able to filter the results by typing in the list or the text field of the window. Please refer to the accompanying keyboard layout documentation for command mapping. Selection in Scan Mode: Along with being able to select content in Narrator’s scan mode using Shift-selection commands, you can now also select a block of data by first moving to one end of the block and pressing F9, moving to the other end of the block and pressing F10. Once F10 is pressed, the entire contents between the two points will be selected. Stop on Controls in Scan Mode: Scan mode is a feature of Narrator that lets you use just a few keys to move around your screen. Scan mode is already on by default in Edge and you can toggle it on and off by pressing Caps lock + Spacebar. While you’re in scan mode, you can press the Up and Down arrow keys to read different parts of the page. With this update, the press of a Down arrow in Scan Mode will stop on interactive elements, so that they are easier to use. An example of this new behavior is that if you are reading a paragraph with multiple links, Narrator will stop on these links when you press the Down arrow.   New Accessibility Features Coming to iPhone, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch To check out all the accessibility related news for the upcoming Apple OS releases follow the link above. Jakob gave us a short review about Aira, a new system which helps blind people to navigate around by using a special glasses or a smartphone with the guidance and the assistance from professional agents. NVDA a very popular free screen reader has a new version for this year called 2018.2, and the list of improvements can be found here. New version of JAWS was also launched during May and besides many improvements in the May update the biggest one is the support for Firefox 60, also called Firefox Quantum, which is finally working, again, after all of the blind users had a huge problems with Firefox performance at the end of 2017. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 finally saw the day of its official release.   WCAG 2.1 was initiated with the goal to improve accessibility guidance for three major groups: users with cognitive or learning disabilities, users with low vision, and users with disabilities on mobile devices. To check out all the features listed visit the link on the W3C website. Those of you who had enough patience to stay and listen to us until the end can enjoy in the demonstration from Jakob about google home. As always, you are free to contact us thru multiple channels including our email and Twitter, and we are looking forward to bring you new stuff during the upcoming summer.

Welcome to the first episode of the EbuAccessCast, an official podcast from EBU which talks about assistive technology for blind and partially sighted people across Europe. Our hosts today in the first episode, Mario Percinic and Jakob Rosin, introduce themselves and then later talk about few things which occurred during last week in the mainstream tech portals as well as a few others which happened in the assistive tech industry. In the news: Google's Lookout will help the blind navigate their environment Mario and Jakob talk briefly about the description of the Lookout app and share their opinion about it. AppleVis has launched their 2018 edition of the iOS App Hall of Fame for which you can vote here, and Jakob talks briefly about the Nominees Google assistant books restaurants and hair salons for you: In future episodes we look forward to bringing you the interviews from the makers of the assistive tech products from all around the globe and the reviews about the gadgets which we tested personally so we can tell you how good and accessible they are. Also we are open for suggestions and submissions about the product reviews from the other users. If you want to contact us, you can send us email on ebuaccesscast@euroblind.org or check out our EbuaccessCast twitter.