Talking Technology with V I Labs
This podcast is focused on technology that supports people who are blind and visually impaired. Our panel of IT Trainers & guest panelists discuss all the latest in mainstream and inclusive technology innovations in a fun and informative manner. V I Labs is the technology function within Vision Ireland. Vision Ireland is the national sight loss agency in Ireland. V I Labs provide technology assessments and training for all our service users. We are a not for profit charity, which offers support and services to people of all ages who are experiencing difficulties with their eyesight. Visit www.vi.ie to discover more about our technology services and other range of services Vision Ireland provide
Talking Technology with V I Labs
Jaws and NVDA, the similarities and differences - Talking Technology Episode 101
On this episode of Talking Technology, we give you all the best bits from our Jaws and NVDA event which took place last week. What are the similarities and differences between these two popular screen readers? Peter and Brian put them to the test to find out.
David and Joe discuss the audio-described Toy Show, and it’s Android update time in tech news.
Send us a voice note with your thoughts now. The number you need is +353 86 199 0011
0:00 Intro
2:33 Voice Notes
19:31 Jaws and NVDA Event
49:38 Talking Technology News
1:05:03 Outro
This Vision Ireland podcast contains chapter markers. If you want to skip the intro or a topic you don't like, you can use chapter markers to do so. Chapter markers are only supported in some podcast apps. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Talking Technology with VI Labs. At VI Labs, we believe technology is the single greatest enabler for people with sight loss and all disabilities. If you're looking for the latest news and conversation on tech from a more accessible perspective, you've come to the right place. You sure have. As you always do. Hello everybody. Welcome in to Talking Technology with VI Labs, episode 101. It is the 9th of December. We are in the Christmas season. The Christmas trees are up here in our Cork office. And yeah, the decorations are here. We are getting into the festive mood, for sure. Have you got all your shopping done? All your technology treats purchased and ready to go? Well, you'll have to tell us about it in a voice note. You'll have to get in touch with us and tell us all about that. And who knows, we might include some of that in our Christmas special, which will be on the way in just two weeks time, just before Santa comes down the chimney. Very exciting stuff. But on this podcast, however, we do have loads of tech content for you. Loads of tech goodies for you, indeed, including a recap of a Jaws and NVDA event, which took place here in Vision Ireland on Friday. We were taking a look at Jaws and NVDA, their similarities, their differences, not to try and kind of find, oh, which is better or anything like that, just to explore and see how versatile they are as well. So we will have the recordings of that and some of that event coming up for you just later on with Dorian. So Dorian will be joining us for that in just a bit. And we also have all your latest talking technology news coming up too. And there are, it's all about updates this week. There's updates on Android, updates on Windows. It's all about the updates. So we'll share that with you really soon too. But for now, though, this isn't just our podcast. This is also your podcast. So remember, there are loads of ways that you can get in touch. We'd love it when you join the conversation. And here is how you can do so. So if you want to join the chat, we'd love to hear from you. If you do want to send us a WhatsApp voice note, the number that you need there, it's 086-199-00-11. That's 086-199-00-11. Or if you do prefer, you can send us an email, the good old fashioned way to content at vi.ie, that's content at vi.ie. But for now, though, let's cross all the way to County Kilkenny, where we've got Mr. Joe Lonegan. Joe, how are you getting on, sir? David, I'm good. I hope you're okay down there in Cork, but it's very windy here at the moment. So I'm just about surviving. I got rid of that trampoline as well. So we've one less thing to worry about down here. Now, did you get rid of the trampoline, Joe, or did it fly away of its own accord? Well, it previously did fly away. I got it back with great difficulty and it was slightly broken. So we decided we'll do a refresh and we'll get a new one next year. So look, it was nice knowing that trampoline, but it has had its difficulties. It's had its day. Yeah, it's had its day in fairness. Fair enough. Yeah, we've got a storm here in Ardent currently. Storm, I think. Am I pronouncing this correct? Is it Bram? Bram. Bram. Bram. Bram. Daniel is the weather expert here. Yes. Daniel, we'll bring you in here. Storm Bram then, is it? Yes. So the whole fun for you is that we're getting orange level wind warnings for this afternoon. So you know, why you don't necessarily travel, I guess. And Joe, if you haven't got rid of your trampoline, definitely tie it down because things are liable to get up. Already this morning, 65 miles an hour winds are 105 kilometers for those who deal in the new currency. You know, quite strong gusts there are coming in across. So I think it's eased off now. Anyway, for most, the south push could probably track up the west coast. I was heading out at lunchtime. It didn't seem that crazy, but obviously people stay safe. Although by the time this podcast is out, most of it will probably be passed anyway, as long. And hopefully their power is back that they can listen to it. Exactly. Well, that's the thing. Well, hopefully we don't lose power as we record this because you know something, we need the electricity. So yeah, the electricity and the heating, as long as we keep both of those, we'll be laughing, but we'll see how we go. Anyway, though, that aside, we did have some voice notes in our voice notes. First up this week from our regular contributor, Edvard, and Edvard is having issues with Facebook and he's not best pleased with Siebel holidays. Basically I've been encountering a problem with Facebook. Lately, like when I double tap on any of my posts, it just says whatever the number of amount of reactions. So like say if it's like 10 reactions. And before I was able to see the list of people who have reacted and with what reaction they reacted. So for example, you know, it'll say like Joe reacts with like reaction or Dave reacts with love reaction, whatever. And then another thing, Siebel. Yeah, I have listened to the Inside Village. Honestly, I did hear of them coming to Ireland because I did get the email. Does it really make that much sense to pay £2,000 if you're in the same country? Like, I don't know, they're just looking for money. They're just looking for money indeed, Edvard. Edvard did say other things, but I think he sums it up nicely there. And it was easier to cut when he says, yeah, they just want money. Joe, do you agree? Oh, well, no, look, it's not as simple as that. Look, of course, it's a business. Obviously, they want money, right? We all get that. But at the end of the day, you are getting a service. Look, I know the price can be prohibitive exactly when it might be low income, especially. But you get a service where you get a guide for probably 80%, 90% of your holiday. Like, you know, so I suppose that's the point of it. Your pain is for somebody else to help you while you are on holidays. So it suits certain people. I suppose going on holidays in your own country, that won't make a whole lot of sense to some people. But Seable are famous for holidays in Sicily originally, and that's one of their probably home places. And from all reports, they have done fantastic holidays in Sicily. So that might be worth saving up for and doing a holiday over there. And look, I've used these accessible holiday services before, like Travelize, a different one. I'm not advertising for them or anything, but they're similar, you know. And look, the price where the sighted person gets over half the price and the vision impaired or blind person pays double. And that's how they balance it in the middle so that the sighted person will help the vision impaired person. That's Travelize system. I think Seable might be slightly different. But you do pay extra for the service, and a bit like a Travelize, and you pay extra, but this one is even extra extra again. But you get an extra service. But there's loads of, look, there's one way of seeing the world, if you can save up for the holidays, maybe do one every two years or something like that. I don't know. But look, I know Edward Ayres is frustrated with the fact that it's so expensive. But do you want me to cover the point you made for us through Facebook as well? Yeah, let's touch on Facebook as well. I have noticed different issues with Facebook, but do you want to touch on that there, Joe? Yeah, I like Facebook. It changes slightly every now and again, and it's such an expensive platform. There's so many different things on a note in Marketplace, and Messenger has gone separate, and there's so many groups, and like business pages and all this kind of stuff. Don't forget the dating, Joe. Don't forget the dating. Dating, yeah, there probably is dating. I haven't used that for a long time, but yeah, Edward, maybe it's something up your street. But look, the thing is with Facebook, yeah, you see the reactions. Obviously, if you double tap on it and flick to the right, and if you're a voiceover user, and you can read who reacted, and maybe click more, and you can read a bit more. But the thing that frustrates a lot of people, I suppose, was they were having trouble putting a different reaction apart from a like. So they changed that lately. So you can double tap on a post, but then if you go into the like button, and double tap and hold, that will expand the like button. So then you can add different reactions, like a love heart, a face with tears of joy, or a smiling face, or whatever. So that will expand all the reactions. I don't know if you've had that on the Facebook, David, but Facebook is a big platform, and you could talk about it all day. It's a huge platform. I think I've definitely run into issues with it of late, in some regards, in the issue I was having, I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before, is when you search for something, the option to filter just wasn't working correctly with the voiceover rotor. So that was the issue I was having. But it sounds like Edward's having a totally different issue. Now he did say that he has reported it to Meta Accessibility, which is all you can do really, and hope that they listen. But it would be good to just see kind of more accessible testing within these different products, do you know? Yeah, well Meta Accessibility, in fairness to them, they have done one big thing for people that are blind and vision impaired. They've brought out the Meta AI system that works on Meta glasses. So I will give Meta a lot of credit for that. So look, things are going in the right direction. It's very hard to keep all the billions of people happy that are using Facebook, but I suppose they're doing their best. Absolutely, and not an easy task at all. Not an easy task in the slightest. So thanks so much for that, Edward. A reminder that if people want to send in voice notes 086-199-0011 on WhatsApp, it's not an audio call. You want to use the voice message button at the bottom of your screen. Joe, we also had some comments in about a documentary that was airing on the BBC, Joe. That's right, Aileen Horace sent us in a comment about a documentary you watched about a blind comedian and traveler that was speaking about driverless cars and Meta AI glasses. She just made a comment that she found the program very interesting and was asking, did we see it? I didn't personally see it now, but you know that comedian quite well. Yeah, Chris McCausland. He actually, funny enough, so Chris McCausland is a blind comedian. He also won the UK Strictly Come Dancing, which is the UK equivalent of Dancing with the Stars. But yeah, that's the same person. OK, that's the same person. Yeah. So he actually had a tour date here in Cork not that long ago. And I saw his show there and yeah, it was really good. He was over in the Everyman Theatre here not that long ago. I'd say if even two months ago. But yeah, same guy. And yeah, it's fantastic to see technology like self-driving cars and so on and so forth being talked about on a large platform like the BBC. I think that's very, very valuable, isn't it? Yeah, I think he was speaking about what the future could look like for him, we'll say in a certain amount of years and 10 years time or something like that. So just saying that everything is going in the right direction kind of a thing, you know, and Aileen found that very interesting. So yeah, I think he's right. Technology is going in the right way. And I think what gets in the way mostly is probably governance. But there is a good reason for that, too, because you don't want like AI and all the things getting ahead of us or government. We want to be just one step ahead of them, you know what I mean? So one step at a time. And I think they'll get it right eventually. Absolutely. There's great work being done in this space. I saw during the week that a company, I think it's pronounced Zooks, they're owned by Amazon. They're a self-driving car company and they had been doing some work with ACB, so the American Council for the Blind. They had been doing some work in testing that out. So there's great stuff happening in these areas and it's only a matter of time. So it is very, very exciting for sure. Yeah. One thing I would like to see change now, it's not driverless cars, but these electric cars, I'd love to see them make a little bit more noise. And when I'm trying to cross the road sometimes, electric car sounds like it's like freewheeling almost to the pedestrian crossing and you never really know if it's coming or not, you know what I mean? So there's no engine noise, very little tire noise. And I don't know what they could do. I thought at one stage they were supposed to bring in some EU regulations to force them to make some noise, but I must read back up on that and see is it going to happen or whatever. But I would like to see it happen. For sure. Yeah. An interesting topic. Do send us your thoughts on that and all of the other stuff we discuss in on WhatsApp. Before we move on to the Jaws and NVDA event, Joe, I do want to briefly ask you, did you watch the toy show with audio description? And if so, what did you think? I did watch it with audio description. I actually started off watching it with audio description on a channel that didn't have it. And then I turned on the RT player and eventually got it going. And at first I found it a little bit iffy and hard to get used to. But then after a while, I actually started to like it, you know, because obviously I wanted the descriptions and wanted the bit of information and what was going on and on those difficult to understand pieces. But yeah, at first it was kind of like, I just wanted to hear the music and I just wanted to, you know, get the rhythm of the program going. But then I decided to leave it on. Yeah. By the end of the program, I actually liked it. I really liked it. And the lady, remind me the lady that does it. She was very good. I thought she was really good. Bernie and Clara. So the two of them kind of alternated throughout. And I thought they both did, in my view, I think they both did an exceptional job. I noticed that all of the feedback that I got was really positive. There was, I think, you know, a few people who were kind of of the view, well, you know, how do you balance, say, descriptions with, you know, the enjoyment of the music, let's say. And there are kind of two schools of thought on that. But I think overall I thought it was really well executed. And to do that live as well. Yeah, that's the thing. Doing it live. Yeah, that's that's the thing about it. Doing it live. That was the bit I was interested in to see where the work go when it's done live. Some of the audio ducking, yeah, it is slightly annoying, but it actually worked out well in the end. Just just just talk a little while you get used to. But talk about comments again. I mean, yeah, look, one or two people said, look, it was difficult to turn on. And some of you had total difficulty getting it on. Look, but maybe it might be the first time using the RT player in a while or whatever. But I think if people want to get the audio description on correctly, you know, when you want it to stay on on your RT player app, I think the best thing to do, first of all, would be to register with the RT player. So sign up with your email address and password, the usual, you know, and then after you signed up, you go into settings and you can turn on audio description as a default. So then when you go into one of the live channels, it will automatically play audio description. And look, if that fails, then I suppose the next thing is you can go into the playback settings by depends what platform you're on. I suppose there's lots of different platforms, but on my Samsung TV, I have to select the program, press the left arrow on my remote and settings comes up. And then one of the first options I see is audio and I have to go down to audio description and turn on. But as I said, in the accessibility settings, you can turn it on by default. It's down the bottom of the screen somewhere. So settings, accessibility, and then there you also have subtitles, you have some low vision options, maybe the high contrast kind of things. You have also accessibility options for people who are hard of hearing the captions. And then you have audio description, the important one probably for us, David. So you turn that on and I think 99% of the time it should work. But there is that occasion, I suppose that it won't work. And you can report it to RT, of course, as well as maybe contact our help desk and we can try our best to help you out with it. Absolutely. Yeah, no, I think that the feedback was universally positive. You know, there was one or two, as you said, that said that they struggled a little bit to get it turned on. Or there was one, I think, that wasn't able to turn it on and that frustrated them. But I think all in all, I think most seemed to have a positive experience. And that is fantastic to see. And where else, Joe, would you have audio description that contains the line, Paddy puts the Christmas poo back in the toilet? I mean, nowhere else. Nowhere else. There you go. There you go. Anyway, that is our voice notes and topics for this week. You can send us a WhatsApp voice note. Let us know your thoughts on the audio description for the toy show. We'd love to hear at 086-199-0011 on WhatsApp or content at vi.ie. Remember, you do not want to do an audio call. You want to use an audio message. You can find that at the bottom right hand corner of your screen. But now, though, last Friday here in Vision Ireland, we had a really cool event taking a look at the similarities and differences between JAWS and NVDA, both some of the most popular screen readers on the market. JAWS, of course, a paid solution, NVDA a free solution. And in this episode of Talking Technology, we're going to recap some of that event, let you hear some of those kind of similarities, let you hear some of those differences and allow you to make up your own mind and let us know as well your thoughts, what works for you and why. So to help us go through the event, it's great to welcome back to the podcast the organizer of that event. He was here last week to Mr. Dorian Salzman. So here's what happened when I caught up with Dorian. So Dorian, two episodes in a row. This is getting dangerous. Welcome back to Talking Technology. How are you, sir? Great, David. Yeah, great. Thanks for having me back. Absolutely. So Dorian, we spoke on the last episode about the JAWS and NVDA event. How did it go? Yeah, it was wonderful. We had a great turnout. And I think a lot of knowledge was passed on about these two screen readers. Excellent stuff. So we did record the event, so we do have some clips from it. But do you want to tell us a little bit, just for those who maybe didn't hear our last podcast, just give us a brief kind of overview of the format of the event. Yeah, so essentially, I introduced the screen readers and told everyone about the history of them and fundamentally what they do. And then we had some tasks that each each demonstrator was demonstrating for us. Absolutely. So we had, I believe it was Peter on JAWS, and then we had Brian on NVDA. And we started off. So what was our first task here, Dorian? Yeah, so essentially, Peter and Brian went to the Vision Ireland website and then skipped through some of the headings and then they were able to complete the contact us section of the website. Absolutely. So in the interest then of hearing the differences in how the screen readers sound, let's jump back in time to last Friday when Peter and Brian took a trip to the Vision Ireland website. So the way to kind of access headings on JAWS is you can do it for a few ways, but we'll just stick with the keyboard. Now, if I press H for headings, Vision Ireland supporting you heading level two. Vision Ireland supporting you heading level two. Right. So there are different levels of headings. So if I press shift H, that will move me back up the screen a little bit. Vision Ireland's mission is to enable people who are blind and vision impaired to overcome the barriers that impede their independence and participation in society. Heading level one. Vision Ireland supporting you heading level two. Vision Ireland supporting you level two. Shop Low Vision 8. Shop Low Vision 8. Vision Ireland Retail heading level two. Vision Ireland Retail. Shop Locations heading level two. And this is all being accomplished by the letter H because it's moving through all the different levels of headings because on most websites you have either you have a maximum of six levels on any head of websites. You have heading level one to all the way to heading level six. Yeah. So we've in our website and in most websites, they've kind of bundled areas of the website together. And to save time, you can skip over those areas as you might do visually by instead of looking at the large print areas that show a heading, Peter is just skipping over them with the H key so he can get to the area of the website he wants quickly. So the next thing, Peter, can you, which is an important part of dealing with an organization, can you find the contact us section of the website? Yeah, sure. So we can do that. So we can do it. There's a few different ways we could do it. But for me, for the sake of convenience, I can do the find option on Jaws. So I can do control F, which then opens up the find box. Then I can type c, o, n, t, a, c, t, space, u, s. Contact us. And then that automatically moves the screen reader and the cursor to the contact us button. So then I can just press enter on that link. And this votes into the next page. So then if I want to navigate, navigate around that page as well, I can press the heading key. Contact us heading level one. Contact us heading level two. Now there's two, two headings then labeled contact us. Now heading level two, I would assume, is the kind of main body of the text. So I'm going to now use the down arrow button. If you have any questions about our services, please do not need to contact us at any time by filling the contact form and one of our staff will get in touch with you as soon as possible. If you prefer, you can also contact us by phone on our info line 1800-911-250-9AM-5PM. Click, click here to fill the form. Click, click here to fill the form. Enter, click here to fill the form. And then I can press enter on the click here button. There we go. And then can you fill out the form for us? Yeah, absolutely. I can fill out the form for you. So again, we'll navigate by heading just to find out where we are. Contact us heading level one. Please fill out the form below and we will contact you shortly heading level two. Now what you can do is either use your arrow keys or a couple of different options. You can use the arrow keys, your tab button, or the letter E for arrow keys. Edit boxes. So name star edit required. So I press the letter E there. So I'm just going to type my name in. And then I can type my name in. Does the TV know this? There we go. And we don't need to add a phone number. How did you know you didn't need to put a phone number in Peter? So it says email star, right? So normally if there's a star there, that means it's mandatory that you need to fill it in. Yeah. But when there's and it says phone edit, listen to that. There's no star. So that means it's an optional input that you can do. Now one other thing, Peter, how are you moving down to between the boxes of the form? So I'm using the tab key at the moment to navigate forward and backwards through the different forms. You can use tab to move forwards down all the available links, interactable buttons or kind of text boxes and shift tab to go in reverse order. So from where you are, you can go to the previous button with shift tab. Great. Inquiry type. Let's go for technology support. We'll just type this as a test. I can never spell inquiry. So you want me to go to peruse the vision iron website. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to alt tab back into Google Chrome. Right. Thank you. And VDA and JAWS new tab, Google Chrome column. So I'm going to open the V.I. website. I'm just going to do control and L, which is Google search bullet live me, which will bring up the prompt to type in the website address. So now I'm just going to do my W W dot V.I. dot I E and press six dot I E selected. So now I'm just with vision Ireland, vision Ireland part of NCBI group button contrast switch. So no, I'm actually in the wet. I'm in the end of vision Ireland website. I can confirm that. I would envy the if I want to do my envy the key, which is generally your insert key on the numeric keypad or the caps lock. If you're using a laptop so I can do my envy the key and the letter T vision Ireland, vision Ireland just confirms the website that I'm in. So I'm happy to proceed now. So it's it's good. Can you now can you skip over the headings of the website three or four times just to hear what's on the website? Well, yes, I think that to to reiterate here now is that a lot of the key combinations that are used within JAWS are within NVIDIA are also kind of the comments wall of the screen readers. So just the way Peter was pressing H search and skip through the headings. If I'm using NVIDIA, I can use H here as well. The skips with the headings. Clickable vision Ireland's mission is to enable people who are blind and vision impaired. I'm going to press H again. Vision Ireland supporting you heading level two shop low vision aids heading level two. And again, as Peter already alluded to, these headings are split into six different sections. So what I can do with NVIDIA as again I could have done with JAWS, if I knew that a heading was a heading level three, for example, I could just press the number three on the linear key keyset, which are above the letter so I can press three clickable Google Lookout heading level three link or if I want to go to a heading level four. So if I just kind of remembered that a particular heading that I went to a lot was a heading level four. I can just press the number four. No next heading at level four. No. Okay, so that tells me that there are no fours. Now if there is a difference between NVIDIA on the web and JAWS, it's literally that we chose as Peter already demonstrated, I could have pressed shift and H to cycle back through the headings. I can't do that with that with NVIDIA. Shift and H doesn't work. H will cycle you forward through the headings. All right, but if I press shift and H here and demonstrate there now for you. Upcoming events heading level two shop preloved online heading shop locations heading level two. Okay, so it's just cycling me forward. But what I can do is I can just jump to the top of the page again with control and home. It will drop me right to the top of the page and I can just come forward through the headings again. Shop preloved clickable up clickable Google Lookout. So it's just it's like any of these scenarios. There's a workaround for everything. So the next bit is can you find the contact us section of this website. Again, as Peter has already has already said with anything because we have huge access to the keyboard there are multiple ways of getting or achieving any of these functions on any given website. So just like Peter demonstrated control F with JAWS brought him brought up the find dialogue. Now I can just do slightly different with NVDA here. Now again, what I would do is I would do my control my NVDA key and F. Okay, find dialogue and that brings up the same dialogue so now I can just press you sorry you see space us and enter content info landmark list with six items list with eight items link contact us link contact us so I just press enter here. I mean, again, what I could have done there, for example, is I could have just done my NVDA key and F seven, which would have brought up a list of the elements on the website that I'm in and just press see until I heard contact us. That would have been another way just to demonstrate there are multiple ways of achieving any of these functions on the website using the various key combinations that are available to you as a screen reader. And that's the ironic thing about it. If you are familiar with the layout of a website, and you know these key short key, hot key shortcuts, then you can actually navigate the websites quicker than a person using the most. So in a kind of a, a macabre kind of a way, it's actually an advantage in certain situations, knowing the key combinations and not so much depending on the most individual layout of the website. Heading level to complaints form. Heading level to the compliance for my will I complain about it. If you are not pleased with the services you've received from us or if we could improve on any aspect possible link click here to fill the complaint for. So why not complain or vision Ireland clickable button contrast switch button button link your shopping cart is clickable nature of complaint required edit required. I just pressed the E to jump to the first field on the form. Okay. And I said, I'm just gonna press enter now to go into what what we call a NVDA users call browse mode so I can actually fill in the form so it's going to press enter here. And I never really click just to demonstrate orderly that I'm actually now in browse mode. So it says star the nature of the complaint. So I'm just going to say that it's not actually a complaint. The level of service and corpus fantastic. Yeah, please don't scare our colleagues. Yep. So now like Peter against we have demonstrated as in you as you would in any form on any website. So if it was an array in our website, you were filling in an application to book a seat to move from one box on a form to the next. You just press the top button location of complaint required edit required blank. And again it says the location of the complaint and it says it says necessary required so that tells me that I needed to fill in that particular box as well. So I'm just going to type in Cork. Okay. Please enter day spin button required editable DD blank. So that's a good one. So now I'm just out of wind down here now to one zero one. So please enter month spin please enter month please enter day spin button required editable blank blank. So I'm going to type in zero four zero six. So please enter day six five. So please enter zero five. Please enter month spin button required invalid entry editable M M blank. So I'm going to type in twelve one two twelve one please enter your spin button required editable Y Y Y Y blank. So I'm going to type in two zero two five. Please enter your complaint details required editor. Okay so it's asking for the actual complaint that it says require so it's going to say this is not. It's a T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T. The output I'm getting from NVDA is slightly different to what Peter was getting there a while ago where Peter was getting the star to tell him that I needed to fill in the form. I'm just getting NVDA telling me that the that the actual field is required. So it's slightly different and these will always give you slightly different feedback. But the actual essential message is related to you. So that's very important. Yes. First name required, edit required. And I want my first name. So Brian B and I'm going to have again last name. So I'm going to have again email required, edit required. So G V I E phone edit blank. I'm going to just I'm going to leave a blank and it says edit blank. So it didn't say required. So I'm just going to leave a blank anyway. Mobile blank. And that's blank as well. And it's not required. Submit button. And I have the submit button. So I'm just going to press enter. Please enter day spin button required. So, yeah. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. It was a very similar experience to Peter there and slightly different ways of getting to the same place. But you'll find that between the two different screen reader experiences anyway. So Dorian, then I guess after hearing that, I suppose, what does that tell us about these two screen readers? We're starting to see similarities already. Yeah. So, you know, both both people, both Brian and Peter were able to complete the task of going to our website. But then maybe some of the information that was read back was slightly different. Absolutely. And Brian's complaint, I don't think it was upheld. Do you know that? Have we checked in on that? I think they struck it off the record. I'm sure. Yeah. There you go. Anyway, so do you want to tell us then a little bit about Task 2? Yes. So Task 2 was to send an email via Outlook. And then we also talked about how it might be different if using Gmail.com. OK. Well, let's have a listen to that now and see are there many differences between that between JAWS and NVDA. So I just press Control N. So using Control N, you can open up a new email. Now, I'm going to send this to my dear and wonderful colleague, Brian Manning, so he can reply to it. A wonderful thing about most of the systems within Outlook as well is that if you have preset addresses, JAWS or NVDA will also read them out if you just press the first letter navigation. So whatever names you're looking for can be found quite quickly. So I've just used the TAB key to move to the subject box. But if I want to add someone, I'll CC Dorian to it. So I'm going to shift TAB back into CC. And let me just down arrow very quickly. I press Enter and it selects it. So I would just say this is a test email. This is a test email. Then I tab out again to move to the main body of the text and I should type hi all. Using JAWS many, many, kind, regards. There we go. And that's all the message written. So I'll just now for a quick way to send it, I just press Control and Enter and that'll send the email. Brian dot Manning at six dot IE Outlook. Waiting for Outlook. Inbox Brian dot Manning at six dot IE Outlook. Table view table. So now we have I'm telling you that I'm in a table. So I should have Peter's email here now. Unread has attachment from Peter Claridge Bowler subject. So Peter's email is there so I can just press Enter. Great. Why don't we pivot on this task, Brian? Could you reply to Peter's email instead of creating a new one? OK, so I can do this in one of two ways. I can go into the email, which I just did there. I just press Enter to open the email and NVDA would have read it. Or what I could also have done is just on the email instead of opening the email, I could have just on the email pressed Control and Or. So again, Outlook is just one of those fantastic programs that just takes into consideration the fact that we are keyboard users. So therefore it opens up the keyboard to a range of tasks using the keyboard. So if I wanted to forward that email, for example, Peter sent me a good email. And if I wanted to send it to David, I could have just done press Control and F. If I wanted to reply, I could have done Control and Or. So you just see the smart way in which the designers of all of these screen reader applications are using the keyboard for easy achievement and for easy access to these different features for the screen reader users. So I'm in Peter's email here. So all I need to do now is just do Control and Or and you hear the NVDA. Well, there it said left aligned, but it would say edit. So what it essentially means is edit. It's waiting now for me to type my reply to Peter. I don't have to type in Peter's email address here because obviously I'm just replying. So the system knows who I'm replying to and it knows that I'm replying to Peter's email address. So I don't have to type it in. It automatically picks that up. But if I was forwarding that email, for example, to you, I'd have to do Control F and type in your email address because obviously the program can't anticipate who I want to forward the message to. So now I just type in my message. Hello Peter. Okay. And I can just arrow up now just to confirm what I've written. Hello, Peter. Well done. Okay. Blank. So I can just do my regards, Brian. Our. And now again, like Peter did a while ago, I can just do my control and enter. Right. This is a test email message. That's it. It's done. The message is sent. So Dorian, we've seen now the similarities and indeed some differences. You know, the purpose of this wasn't necessarily to, you know, push one against the other and show, oh, Jaws is better than NVDA or NVDA is better than Jaws. No, we weren't going doing that. The aim was to show that both of these tools are really versatile screen readers. And there are going to be little things that you might prefer about one over the other. And that may be all well and good. But I think one of the interesting things that we did as well is to show that you can customize these screen readers to a massive degree as well. So you can change things like the voice and the speed and all of that. Yeah, that's right. Like I think from the outset, it was explained that Peter and Brian have their own preferences and you may have heard some of those. But these two screen readers can be fully customized to the to the end users preferences. And I mean, it just goes to show as well, like these screen reader voices, like you have eloquence, you have e-speak, those show up in Jaws and NVDA. But also they exist on iPhone as well and they exist in all sorts of screen readers. So it is good to know that you have those options. Brian actually showed us how quickly you can change some of those key NVDA settings. Have a listen to this. NVDA actually is quite good when it comes to the different settings like pitch, voice, volume, speech rate. So what you do again, you hold on your NVDA moderator key. So you hold control NVDA and you tap the right arrow key and you'll hear the different settings. So I just told you on the control and the NVDA key now press right arrow key rate fifty five. So the rate is fifty five. So if I press the down arrow key, you know, rate fifty, rate, rate forty, rate thirty, rate thirty, rate twenty five, rate twenty, rate, rate, rate, rate, rates, rates, rate, rate, rate, rate, rate one hundred. So as you may have gathered, Peter is a lot younger than me. And I find that there's a sociology to this and the sociology is that the younger you are, the later, the quicker, the faster you want the speech to run out. So in my experience, if I'm working in a school, you know, the kids will have the speech on, you know, voice over or JAWS or NVDA really, really quick. Sometimes I'll have to slow it down and then the older you get, the slower, the rate of the speech. So I like to have it around fifty. So I'm just going to bring it back down to fifty. I wonder if we can put that on a chart, maybe there's a chart we can put this on, you know, to show age versus speech rate on the screen reader. There's a sociology to it. But now if I wanted to change the voice in NVDA again, control NVDA right arrow key. Rate boost off. Pitch thirty five. Volume one hundred. I can change the volume here. Now, this is not the computer volume. This is just the volume of the speech. OK, I can go again. Voice Microsoft David. So Microsoft David. So I can come down to Fred. Voice Microsoft George. Voice Microsoft George. So I'm just hitting the down arrow. Voice Microsoft George. And I can go up. Voice Microsoft Susan. Voice Microsoft Hazel. And I'm going to come back down to Voice Microsoft David. I'm going to come back to David. My godson's name is David. So I'm going to hang on to David, I think. Oh, that's great. Rate fifty. And then we're back to rate then again. So it cycles through the different settings options. Now, again, when I'm in NVDA, if I wanted to go to change some of the actual settings within NVDA, like the keyboard settings or whatever, I can easily just do my NVDA key and the letter N. NVDA menu. And that brings me to the NVDA menu. So I can just arrow down here now through the different settings. Preferences. Tools submenu. Help submenu. Configuration pro. Revert to save. Reset configuration to factory defaults. So, for example, I can add my default settings so I can just arrow down to default, press enter and it will revert NVDA to the settings that I got it at. Or I can check for updates within the help menu. I can change some of the keyboard settings. Again, I can just come up here and have a look at preferences, maybe. Revert. Help sub. Tools sub. Preferences submenu settings. Right arrow. There's the settings. So I just press enter on that. For example, I can choose to have NVDA start with the computer. So I can just arrow tab over here and get that setting. General save configuration. Show exit options when exiting NVDA. Play sounds when starting or exiting NVDA. Check box. Checked ALT plus P. Logging level. Combo box info. Collapsed ALT plus O. Start NVDA after I sign in. Check box not checked ALT plus A. And you just do NVDA key N and that brings you into this window and you can make whatever changes to NVDA that you want from within here. And again, that's something if you're interested in hearing more about any of those settings, just contact your local Vision Ireland trainer. We can go through them in more detail. So Dorian, if you were to have one overarching takeaway from this event, what do you think it would be? I think that the celebrities similarities between these two screen readers are probably vastly outweigh the differences in a lot of cases. But maybe it's worth talking to your IT team if you're in the workplace or if you're at home discussing with us in Vision Ireland. Absolutely, because everyone's need is going to be different, isn't it? So how can people find out more, Dorian? Where can people go to check out more? Well, please always contact us on 1-800-911-110 or labs at vi.ie and we'd be very happy to help you. Absolutely, we really, really would. Dorian, thank you so much for joining us on Talking Technology. Before we let you go, we can't have you on three podcasts in a row, I'm afraid. So I will ask you before we wrap up, what is your favorite Christmas movie? I think we can ask that now at this point, we're in December. Yeah, that's a really good question. It depends who I'm watching it with. I definitely love Home Alone, that's for sure. You're a Home Alone fan. Dorian, thank you so much for your contributions on the podcast, newsletter and all that over 2025. Really appreciate it and hopefully you have a good Christmas and enjoy 2026. Thank you. Looking forward to being back in 2026 for some more. Great, as always, to catch up with Dorian on the podcast and we will indeed, no doubt, have him back in 2026. Well done as well to Peter and to Brian for their great work on that event and hopefully whether you attended it live or whether you listened in to it through the podcast, we really hope you do enjoy it and did enjoy it and maybe it helped you make some decisions of your own. Do let us know your thoughts on that. But for now, though, let us move on, shall we? It is time once again for Talking Technology News. This is Talking Technology News. So with your latest Talking Technology News, I'm Daniel Gunn. Android is getting a number of new accessibility updates, some of which could be very useful for those with low vision. The new updates were announced to celebrate International Day of Persons with Disabilities, which was last week. First up, there is a new enhanced dark mode that will be able to provide a darker interface for apps, even those apps which don't natively support dark mode. This is a really useful feature for those who use dark mode or who struggle with glare. You can enable the new expanded option in the dark theme to automatically darken most apps on your device. For TalkBack users, a new Gboard feature will allow you to start and stop dictation using a two finger double tap gesture. This new gesture will likely lead to a major boost in efficiency. There are other updates from Google too that don't relate to those who are blind or visually impaired, including the introduction of expressive captions to YouTube. These improvements are great to see and hopefully will lead to a more accessible experience across the board. How do you find your experience using Android? Has it improved over the years? Please do let us know with a WhatsApp Vice Note. In other news, Microsoft is giving some Windows 10 users another chance to upgrade to the latest version of Windows 11. It is reported by Forbes that up to 500 million Windows devices could be running an older version of Windows, and as such Microsoft is giving users another chance to upgrade. It's important to note that not all computers will support Windows 11, so if you don't get the option to upgrade, that is probably why. It is also important to consider that if you are going to upgrade your system that you should check that any assistive technology you are using supports the newer operating system. If you do have any questions, please feel free to contact VI Labs to get some technology support on 1-800-911-110. Also this week, Portuguese authorities have told Ryanair that the airline can't refuse boarding passes with paper boarding passes. The warning that it will be in violation of EU air passenger rights. Ryanair recently moved away from paper-based boarding passes in favor of digital passes, which a user can have on their phone. While this works for some, it might not always be ideal, depending on the type of phone a user has. While there are efficiencies to be gained from moving everything to the digital world, there are also some disadvantages. Technology can fail, batteries can die, and of course some people just prefer paper-based options. It seems though that the Portuguese authorities have made progress, saying it appears that Ryanair intends to guarantee all passenger rights, including those of passengers with disabilities, reduced mobility, or those who do not have a smartphone. It also intends not to apply a boarding pass reissue fee to those who have checked in online. How do you feel about paper-based or digital boarding passes? Please do let us know with a WhatsApp Vice Note. And now it's time for some rapid fire stories. Be My Eyes has been recognized in Apple's App Store Awards as one of the best apps for cultural impact. Game maker Electronic Arts has made a number of accessibility-focused patents free to use in a bid to help improve game accessibility. And finally, Warner Brothers looks set to be acquired by Netflix in a staggering 72 billion US dollar deal. However, since the deal was announced, Paramount have upped the stakes by offering even larger amounts. Let us know your thoughts on any of these stories now. And if you want more technology content, be sure to sign up for the Tech on Tap newsletter. Just search Labs Newsletter, sign up on Google. For now, though, it's back to you, David. Why, thank you, Daniel. Firstly, Android, you are an Android fan, I think it's fair to say. These are great improvements to see on the Android side. It is, yes, I definitely have to agree with that, David. While there has been changes on Google over the last few years, I think accessibility didn't really get the oomph, I guess. You know, since maybe two, two and a half years ago, TalkBack kind of got a remake over with all accounts from user feedback. That has been decent. So maybe they took that on board and said, yeah, let's go a bit further and improve more and more accessibility. You know, like while there have been new initiatives over the last two years, I don't think anything as kind of impactful as this. And it, you know, reading from, you know, it was the Google blog, basically, that came out with this there last week. So reading what they promise and hopefully it'll just deliver, you know, it's still only rolling out. As we say, they're letting it out in incremental upgrades. So the interesting see now as we close out 2025 and go into 2026, how these updates actually work because, you know, the proof is in the pudding. And you get that on your phone and start to experiment around with it and applying it to things. Does it work as good as it's promised? That remains to be seen, I guess. I mean, it's important, though, because Google, I suppose, because Google is literally everywhere, whether you have an Android or you don't, you're going to see impacts from these. I mean, you know, those expression, expressive captions on YouTube, for example, is a huge deal. Yeah, absolutely like that. You know, it's going to make the user experience so much better. You know, we're just talking there yourself and Joe about the Thai show and the audio description coming in there. Like, don't forget that captions and, you know, now we see expressive captions coming in. You know, that is equally important as well for some users to be able to consume. Absolutely. Exciting stuff. Joe, if I ask you there on Ryanair, you know, Ryanair is one of those companies I think some people love to hate a little bit. But paper boarding passes versus digital boarding passes. Why is it still important that we still have access to those paper passes? Well, it's still important for people that want to use them, as simple as that, and some people as well, as you alluded to in the news, your battery can go dead. Some people might not have a suitable smartphone. You could have a Doro or any other phone that might not be able to have a digital wallet on it. I know there is a more modern Doro now that is a smartphone. Why would you have an older phone or even have a thing as old as something similar to an old Nokia or whatever? You're entitled to have whatever phone you want, you know what I mean? So, boy, if you rock up with an older phone and then they say, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, madam, you cannot use that. You have to have a digital wallet. That's going to cut out a percentage of people that like to travel every now and again, you know what I mean? I know Ryanair are famous for cheap flights, but not really anymore. I don't see cheap flights being cheap anymore, you know what I'm saying? So I think at this stage, flights are so expensive, they should be open to everybody. If you want choice of having a couple of printed versions of boarding passes in your wallet or jacket or whatever you want for your own, look, peace of mind, I think you should be entitled or have the right to have them. Yes, I agree with you there, Joe. When you rock up to the gate with your boarding pass, the handheld scanner can easily scan it off of these papers as it can off the screen. I think it was just pernickety for the sakes of getting people on maybe to use the app because I did download the app myself and while you're going in and you can't get your boarding passes on it, that's very handy. But I think the real purpose behind it is you also have another section on there, you know, order your tea and coffee and your sandwich and all this to your seat while you're flying. So I actually think that's, you know, kind of the push behind it maybe to get more people using the app. That's also, you know, there is the aspect of it. And, you know, look, we could be really cynical about this, you know, but and some will say arguably we are. But I mean, you know, the other side of it is I think there's charges then as well. If you did rock up with a paper, what do they call that? They're a reissuing fee, I think they call it. But, you know, like it is, I think something that you could easily get caught. And I think it's just good to have options because there's nothing worse than, you know, being in an airport, which is already for a lot of people, a very stressful experience. And, you know, then you get hit with something unexpected, you know, nobody wants that, you know, that's not good even from an accessibility point. You're walking up to the gate, you drop your phone and it smashes, you know, like this happens, you know, what do you do? You're probably crying, but yeah, I would cry. Yeah, but there you go. But no, you make a valid point that there are so many things that can go wrong, you know, like things just don't work sometimes. And that's the that's what can catch you. You know, it's interesting, actually, just before we move on. And I do want to ask you just about Windows updates in a second, Daniel, something that's very useful for those, the handful of you that may ever be using Cork Airport, they've got a great WhatsApp service on their website where you can put in your flight number and it will send all of the information from the board to you on WhatsApp. It's a very useful. I don't know that it was designed for accessibility, but it's a very useful feature just for those who weren't aware of that. That's brilliant. Yeah. So there you go. Anyway, moving on, Daniel, the last topic there is our Windows update. Windows are going, you know, oh, you can't upgrade now, you can, you can, you can't, you can't, you can't. People are able to update again for a bit. Yeah. Look, as well as when Windows 11 launched, there was a big push from Microsoft to convert Windows 10 users into current Windows 11 users. And I think for the course of about a year, and this is going back about two years ago, that you got a notification that try Windows 11, you know, upgrade for free, install it now. Now, just a caveat on this, because I'm very conscious not all of our users out there will be scratching their heads saying, Janie, I never got any update or offer to update Windows 11. The reason being is the hardware in your computer must be capable of running Windows 11. So if you didn't get the offer, chances are you were either offline the whole time or your computer just would struggle. So therefore, Microsoft just deemed your computer ineligible to upgrade. However, you know, with all that offering, I think it's probably reading between the lines to say Microsoft were kind of disappointed in the adoption of people to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11. And that recent survey done there by, I think it was Dell, are suggesting that up to 500 million computers around the world that could move to Windows 11 from Windows 10 haven't bothered. So I think this is another, yeah, another kind of way of getting those people who have the machines that are good enough to run Windows 11 to run it. And so, however, we did also mention there in the article that if you are using assistive software, it's far too long to go to every program out there that is assistive software and say, well, will this run with Windows 11 or will it not? Just if particularly if you have older versions of assistive software, I would say, you know, upgrade into Windows 11 could actually negate the your experience mightn't be what you'd hoped because obviously if the if the assistive software is much older and you're upgrading your windows to the newest version, that older assistive software just doesn't know enough about Windows 11 to navigate around it smoothly. That's about it that way. And also, if you do upgrade to Windows 11, if you do get the offer, you're going to the latest version, basically Microsoft put out a newer version of Windows 11 every year. And, you know, the 2025 version of Windows 11, you know, if you're going back using that with software that's six, seven, eight years old, I would, you know, I would expect there could be some compatibility issues. So, yeah, taking the free upgrade to Windows 11 and you might find yourself, you might need to go back and, you know, pay to upgrade your assistive software if you bought it in the first place and you need to upgrade to a newer version. However, there are free assistive software versions out there and lots of people use them. You know, obviously, if they're free, you can upgrade for free and, you know, in that boat could have a very smooth experience. So, just if you do see the offer, I suppose the take-home message is, if you do see the offer pop up, oh, you're entitled to a free upgrade to Windows 11, just maybe take into consideration your assistive software situation is going to work post-upgrade. That's leaving it at that, I think. That's the advice. And give us a ring if you do want support via labs. That's why we're here to help. The number there 1-800-911-110. That's 1-800-911-110. That's open nine to five every single day, every weekday, I should say. And you can give us a call to get any technology support that you need there. But, Daniel, for now, thank you so much for that. Really appreciate it. And thank you, Joe, as well for your contributions there. Much appreciate it also. And thank you for listening. That is about our lot for this week on Talkin' Technology. A reminder that if you do want to check out some of the upcoming courses that we have, you can find the full details on the upcoming events section of the website. There are still some places left in some of our courses for December. We have a few there. We've got one coming up on Android and on Apple accessibility features. They're right around the corner, so you're going to want to get your names in now. Go to via.ie and check out the upcoming events section there as well. But for now, though, thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a really good rest of your week. Stay safe in the storm. And we'll be back in two weeks time for another episode of Talking Technology with V.I. Labs. And we might even have Santa Claus. I.A. Labs. Digital inclusion. Your legal obligation.