Sight and Sound Technology Podcast

Liam Geschwindt is the co-founder of TouchPulse, who are developing Navis, the first personal navigation companion for the visually impaired.

Stuart re-connects with Joe Said, from Tactile Engeneering, the people behind the Cadence multi-line Braille Tablet.

Stuart catches up with /Dave Williams, RNIB's Inclusive Design Ambassador, to learn about his work and the work of the Inclusive design team.

This week Sight and Sound Technology are attending the 40th CSUN Assistive Technology conference in Anaheim, California. Stuart introduces the series and gives us a sense of what to expect.

February is a busy time for our friends at RNIB and specifically in their Northern Ireland team. Two events of note are running across two days. On Tuesday February 25th the RNIB Braille and Beyond library tour comes to Lisburn City Library, from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. On Wednesday February 26th RNIB Northern Ireland's Technology Fair, now in its second year, will be taking place at the Lagan Valley Island, also in Lisburn, from 11:00 am to 4:30 pm. Stuart catches up with RNIB's Jackie Brown to find out more.

Welcome back to another episode of Sight and Sound Technology's podcast. This time we're talking all things AI. Envision have recently launched Envision Ally on their smart glasses as well as putting the Ally app for iOS and Android into public beta. Stuart is joined by Envision's co-founder and CEO Karthik Mahadevan to tell us more. You can give the Envision Ally app a spin on your platform of choice if you wish by using the links below. iOS: https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ally.me%2Fbeta%2Fios&data=05%7C02%7Cstuart.lawler%40sightandsoundtechnology.ie%7C5e499efbe8454c7763e108dd317b730e%7C9d76d91d0dda48c3aa025a7a6056bfc0%7C0%7C0%7C638721128478320082%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=sAm8xDvDxd8kOTkfRFEHv%2BfJqXCbrxVMr%2Fh31YOKSlI%3D&reserved=0 Android: https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ally.me%2Fbeta%2Fandroid&data=05%7C02%7Cstuart.lawler%40sightandsoundtechnology.ie%7C5e499efbe8454c7763e108dd317b730e%7C9d76d91d0dda48c3aa025a7a6056bfc0%7C0%7C0%7C638721128478347137%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=l0%2FOG72Jaaf3tvPpvZT02w3Ys1ObCQTB%2FeUxsr%2FTY4Y%3D&reserved=0 Our friends from Blazie Engineering have just released a new and exciting application called Blazie Agent, that allows you to use Chat GPT from anywhere on your computer, as long as you have the JAWS screen reader running. Stuart is joined by Blazie's Kelvin Duncan to learn more.

As we join in the world-wide celebrations of 200 years of Braille here at Sight and Sound Technology, we're delighted to introduce another Braille device to our portfolio. Paige Connect transforms the classic Perkins Brailler for instant translation and gamified learning on any device. Stuart meets with Gregory Hargraves from Paige Braille to find out more. Alan Taylor has recently joined our Scottish team to head up our training function north of the border. Stuart meets Alan to find out a little about him and his role.

Bristol Braille Technology have been synonymous with the development of multi-line Braille technology for more than 10 years. We are very excited to unveil the Canute Console which is just entering our product portfolio. On this episode Stuart meets Stephanie Sergeant and Ed Rogers from Bristol Braille Technology to learn more about this device.

In episode 91, we introduced Will Carter, from our tech support team, who had produced a comprehensive audio tutorial for the SmartVision 3 mobile phone. This episode features the full tutorial for easy access.

There's less than two weeks to go before Sight Village Central, taking place at the East Side Rooms, in Birmingham. Stuart is joined by Priyanka Srivastava and Ferkan Metin from Envision, to tell us about some of their latest updates, and, Priyanka and Ferkan will also join us on the stand in Birmingham! Wil Carter from our technical support team has just produced a new audio tutorial for the SmartVision 3 mobile phone. Stuart catches up with Will and Ash Cross, our tech support manager, to find out about the tutorial and some of the team's future plans for content development.

The International Council on English Braille (ICEB) recently held it's eighth general assembly, in Auckland, New Zealand. This event, run once every four years, is an opportunity for Braille users, producers, researchers and technology companies to get together and explore all aspects of the Unified English Braille code, as well as other specialist areas such as Maths and Music. On this episode Stuart is joined by Matthew Horspool, Code Maintenance Officer with ICEB, to reflect on a very busy few days of Braille-related activities and discussions.

The very popular and much beloved Sight Village Assistive Technology exhibition is turning 30 this year. The event, which started its life on the Queen Alexandra College campus has evolved to be a major event and is a firm favourite in the calendars of blind and low vision users of assistive technology, as well as a host of assistive technology companies and charities providing services for people with sight loss. This year, Sight Village returns to the East Side rooms in Birmingham, for two days, on Monday 8th and Tuesday 9th of July. To celebrate its 30th birthday, the event will also include an evening of entertainment and a very special Sight Village Assistive Technology museum. Stuart is joined by Paul Hopkins and Rose Woodall from Queen Alexandra College to give us all the details.

The Sight and Sound team are fresh back from the world renowned Sight City Assistive Technology show, which takes place annually in Frankfurt. This episode is all about glimpsing at some new technology, which will shortly enter our product line. We'll hear from Orbit Research, Harpo, Paige Connect, Next VPU and WeWalk. And, if that wasn't enough, there are some promotions on some of the technology featured in this episode that you will not want to miss out on!

Forrest Yoga is renowned globally as a powerfully physical, internally focused Ceremonial yoga practice that emphasizes how to carry a transformative experience from the yoga mat into daily life. On this very special and very different episode of our podcast, Stuart is joined by Sight and Sound Technology's Sharon Lyons, who took a month away from her life and work to go to  Barcelona to become a Forrest yoga practitioner.

Welcome into another episode of the Sight and Sound Technology podcast. Today's episode is all about an exciting new addition to our portfolio called SpeakSee. Speaksee is the first microphone system able to accurately transcribe group conversations. In addition, Speaksee shows what's being said in different colors for each person, In less than a second. Each speaker can have their own name corresponding with the microphone they are wearing. In this way a Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing person can distinguish who says what. This new and very exciting technology aims to make conversations accessible for all. Joining Stuart on the show is Adam Lee, Business Development Manager with SpeakSee in the UK to tell us more.

We're hugely excited at present as the Braille eMotion, the latest refreshable Braille display from selvas Healthcare in South Korea enters our portfolio. But this is much more than just a Braille display, as Jenny Axler from Selvas Healthcare tells us when she sits down with Stuart for a chat.

The 39th CSUN Assistive Technology Conference AND EXHIBITION in Anaheim, California, hosted by the Centre on Disabilities, Division of Student Affairs at California State University, Northridge, has just concluded for another year. Sight and Sound Technology's Stefanie Davies was on the ground in California and joins Stuart to talk about the event.

World Optometry Week takes place this year from 17th to 24th March. The 2024 theme is all about advancing Optometry's Commitment to Global Eye Care. To mark World Optometry week, Stuart meets Sarah Arnold, who has worked as an optomitrist for the last 30 years, and who is herself visually impaired.

On this episode Stuart meets the insporational 16-year-old Nathon Proudfoot, who has invented his very own low vision device called the nathon 14. We also have information about a very interesting webinar hosted by the UK Association for Accessible Formats (UKAAF) on March 21st.

The popular Sight Village assistive technology show is kicking off for 2024 by visiting Blackpool on Tuesday 9th April, at the Winter Gardens, from 09:30 am to 3:30 pm. Stuart is joined by Rose Woodall from QAC to give us all the details.

Welcome to the 80th episode of our podcast, which coincidentally enough marks our Christmas 2023 programme. Speaking of Christmas, you may not be aware that Santa has some amazing offers on a range of hardware from our partners in Kapsys, Envision, WeWalk, Vispero and Hims, and Stuart has all the details. We report from a recent Employer Engagement event, held in Dublin, by Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind, who have been running the Employment Vision project for the last two years. The project, supported by funding from Pobal, aims to support people with sight loss to gain employment and build confidence and aims to show employers that people with impaired vision are an untapped pool of talent ready to make a difference! We hope you enjoy our final show of 2023, and we look forward to our return in January.

The Cadence tablet from Tactile Engineering is a pocket-sized device (about the size of a large mobile phone) with 48 cells of 8-dot refreshable Braille, in four lines of 12 cells each. Connecting four tablets into a desktop quartet provides eight lines of 24 cells each. The tablet features Perkins keys, a directional pad for navigation and control, and seven multi-use keys for selecting lines, accessing labels and menus, highlighting objects, and more. Joe Said from Tactile Engineering recently visited our head office in Northampton and Stuart took the opportunity to sit down with him and learn more.

The ever popular Sight Village South-East event is returning to Kensington Town Hall on Tuesday 7th November. Doors open at 10:00 am and the event runs until 5:00 pm. Stuart is joined by Paul Hopkins and Rose Woodall from QAC to tell us all about it.

We're delighted to mark National Braille week by having a reflective chat with Matthew Horspool. Matthew's career started in a school for the blind, where he worked as a Braille transcriber and teacher of technical Braille codes. He has been formally involved with the Braillists Foundation since it was registered as a charity in 2020 and took up the post of General Manager in 2021. He is also Braille Subject Lead for the UK Association for Accessible Formats and has recently been appointed as Code Maintenance Officer with the International Council on English Braille. In his spare time, he sings in the choir at Coventry Cathedral, where Braille is invaluable to his success.

If you've ever had an idea for a feature in JAWS, Zoomtext or Fusion, this could be your big chance to shine and get your idea out there! Vispero have just launched their 'Next Big Thing' contest, running until October 16th. All you have to do is create a three-minute video presentation outlining your software feature idea. Stuart is joined on this episode by Ryan Jones, Vice President of software product management at Vispero who tells us all about it.

Paul Ryb lost his central vision in 2007, but his life changed when he gave blind tennis a go at a sports hall in Wimbledon. Last week, he was amongst a select few invited to return to Wimbledon, not to that sports hall, but to the most famous tennis court in the world, to play an exhibition match. As he prepares for the World Blind Games in Birmingham, followed by the World tennis championships in Poland, Stuart catches up with Paul to learn more about his love of tennis and his incredible journey.

We've just returned from this year's Sight Village Central event in Birmingham, and, at that event, we were delighted to unveil our new partnership with WeWALK. WeWALK aims to Enhance the mobility of visually impaired people through a revolutionary smart cane and smartphone app. The WeWALK cane detects above-ground obstacles with ultrasound while still retaining the standard white cane's ground feedback. In this episode Stuart meets with Jean Marc Feghali, Head of Research and Innovation at WeWALK, to learn about this revolutionary mobility aid. If you want to take the WeWALK for a test-drive, then please get in touch with the office by telephone in the UK to 01604 798070.

Matthew Horspool is a familiar voice and a familiar name for his various activities in the blind and low vision community. Stuart caught up with Matthew, in his capacity as General Manager of the Braillists Foundation to find out more about the charity and the work they do.

Saima Ashraf, from Blackburn, is a senior auditor at Merseyside Police, breaking down stereotypes of what a visually impaired person can do. Stuart caught up with Saima at a very busy Sight village for a quick chat.

Since the launch of their smart glasses a couple of years ago, Envision have been changing the way that people with low or no vision see the world around them. With the recent explosion of Chat GPT and AI in general, Envision have been working hard to make sure that this new and exciting technology is at the heart of their own tools and we can already see the benefits in recent software upgrades. In another of our Sight Village Central countdown podcasts, Stuart sits down with Vanessa Vigar, Chief Marketing Officer at Envision. We talk not only about Envision, their technology, AI and the future, but we also learn a little about Vanessa and how she came to this role.

We're continuing our countdown to Sight Village Central 2023 and meeting some of the great partners that we have the pleasure of representing across the UK and Ireland. First up, Stuart is checking in with an old friend. Between releasing their new SensePlayer device earlier this year, and working on a major update to the BrailleSense 6, Selvas Healthcare, the parent company of Hims, based in South Korea are incredibly busy. Jenny Axler is back to tell Stuart what's been happening and to tell us what we can expect to find in that soon-to-come BrailleSense 6 firmware release.

We're counting down to the biggest annual assistive technology exhibition in the UK. Sight Village Central takes place this year in a brand new location, at Eastside Rooms, 2 Woodcock Street, in Birmingham, on Monday 17th and Tuesday 18th of July. In the first of our Sight Village countdown series, Stuart is joined by our Head of Sales and Marketing Stefanie Davies, to tell us what we can expect in the lead-up to this major event.

Sight Village has become a favourite event in many of our calendars over the years. The organisers at Queen Alexandra College are always innovating to make the events bigger and better and, there's always something new and exciting to be found. On this episode Stuart chats with Paul Hopkins, from Queen Alexandra College to find out all about this year's Sight Village calendar of events, including locations and what people might expect when they visit.

Nick Alsbury is the newest member of our field sales team. Stuart sits down with Nick to get to know him and hear about his previous media career!

Welcome and happy new year from all at Sight and Sound Technology. Our podcast returns for a new year with an exciting new addition. We have introduced podcast transcripts starting with this episode. We hope this will be of use to our deafblind friends, and also to anyone who simply wants to quickly find content without having to listen to the show. Please let us know if this feature is helpful. On this episode Stuart meets Fraser Fleming and Graham Gunning, founders of Triple Tap Tech, a charity in Glasgow who advise, help, support and train people with a visual impairment on everything to do with technology.

Ruth Gallagher-Carr is one half of the duo behind the hugely successful Getting AT Ready conference, which she developed alongside her colleague Carolyne Smith. She's also been responsible for building a thriving presence for Sight and Sound Technology in Scotland, and, for working as part of a team to develop a robust quality management system in the company. As Ruth prepares to move to the next chapter in her career, Stuart sits down with her for a reflective chat about her time with Sight and Sound Technology and almost 17 years in total working in the sight loss sector. Merry Christmas from the Sight and Sound Technology podcast team!

Wednesday 4th January is World Braille Day, and we're delighted to announce details of a half-day online conference that we're putting together in association with our friends at the Braillists Foundation. This podcast episode is somewhat different to our regular output, in that we have a guest host in the wonderful Steven Scott, host of the DoubleTap podcast, who has kindly taken the show into his very capable hands to sit down with Matthew Horspool from the Braillists Foundation and our own Stuart Lawler, to talk all things Braille, and of course, to talk more about the World Braille Day conference. This episode is also being simulcast on the Braillists Foundation's podcast feed, so if you subscribe to both our shows you will likely hear it twice! Sincere thanks to Steven for doing a great job in bringing us together and stimulating some great discussion. We hope you will enjoy this very special episode.

We're just back from a hugely successful Sight Village event, and it was wonderful to return to Kensington Town Hall, in the heart of London. On this episode Stuart catches up at the event with Rob Powell, who tells us about the Jubilee Club Magazine, and Freek van Welsenis, co-founder of the company who have brought us the revolutionary Hable One device.

The SmartVision 3, the only Google certified smartphone designed specifically for people with low or no vision has recently joined our product portfolio. This handset, which integrates Google's Talkback screen reader, offers three ways to control your smartphone and access information, including a tactile keypad. Stuart caught up with Tony Shrubb from our field sales team to find out all about it.

Roger Firman is chair of UKAAF, the UK Association for Accessible Formats. Until June of this year, when he retired, he ran his own company called Golden Chord, dedicated to providing a high-quality personalised transcription service for customers who require music, music-related and other materials in braille. Roger is a life-long user of Braille and is passionate about its application in all areas of life. On this very special podcast to mark National Braille week 2022, Stuart sat down with Roger for an in-depth chat.

Remote Incident Manager (RIM), the latest exciting software release from Pneuma Solutions, is a fully accessible remote desktop application for technical support, training, and simply helping friends and family with their PCs. We had so much fun with founders Mike Calvo and Matt Campbell last time that we invited them back to hang out with Stuart and tell him all about this revolutionary application.

Sam Coulson will have been a very familiar voice if you attended our Social Hub and other Sight and Sound Technology webinars in the early days of lockdown. Sam left Sight and Sound Technology in August 2021 to pursue his acting career, but last week he made a welcome return and he's popped into catch up with Stuart and tell him what he's been up to since hanging up his assistive technology sales hat.

Our podcast returns after a short summer break, and this time we have a new member of the Sight and Sound team to meet! Stefanie Davies has recently joined as Marketing Manager. Stuart catches up with Stefanie to find out about her and her role at Sight and Sound Technology.

The DAISY Consortium's Music Braille project is a cross-sector collaboration to identify, prioritise, and deliver both short-term and long-term improvements to secure the future of music braille production and use. The project aims to ensure that more music braille scores are available more easily to more blind musicians world-wide. Stuart is joined on this episode by DR. Sarah Morley Wilkins, Project Manager and User Experience Consultant to learn more.

The mission of the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers is to support better vision for all. Founded in 1629, the company is number 60 in the list of City of London Livery Companies by order of precedence. The company want to inspire future generations committed to visionary eye care, building upon their rich heritage of almost 400 years. On this episode Stuart sits down with the company's current master, Ian Davies, to learn about an exciting event recently held at the Mansion House in London, to promote the significant benefits to business in the city of London in recruiting people with low or no vision.

Stuart meets Sight and Sound Technology's Alan McGillivray,, Master of Ceremonies at this year's AT Ready festival.

Stuart is joined by Liam Pettitt from matchware, headline sponsors of the AT Ready festival.

Stuart catches up with George Rhodes, director of AllAble and keynote speaker at this year's AT Ready festival

Stuart is joined by Sight and Sound Technology's Head of Education Carolyne Smith, to help set the scene for this year's event.

Welcome to AT Ready 2022, an event providing disability professionals in Further and Higher Education the opportunity to share best practice, learn about new technologies and to hear from experts. Stuart introduces us to the event and a little about what we can look forward to on the next few mini podcast episodes.

BlindAmbition is an international disability training consultancy focused on improving the lives of disabled people. They work with everyone from multi-national market-leading technology companies, global retailers/manufacturers, National Governments to smaller charities and businesses. In short anyone who needs help improving the accessibility of their products, services and working environment for Disabled and disadvantaged groups. Stuart caught up with founder Seema Flower to learn more.