Tactile graphics, iPhone warnings, and the latest from CSUN 2026 - Talking Technology 108

On this episode of Talking Technology, we catch up with Michael Grimes from Canon to learn about their world unseen exhibition and the technology behind printing tactile images.

We share our thoughts on the latest updates from the CSUN conference in the US, discussing new products from Habel, as well as lots of Meta Glasses updates. 

We discuss the Garda iPhone warning and share how Vision Ireland can help, and we explore the invisible button causing havoc for screen reader users on Facebook.

Join the conversation with a WhatsApp voice note now. The number you need is +353 86 199 0011. 

0:00 - intro 

2:29 - Voice Notes and CSUN 2026

26:16 - Tactile Graphics Discussion

37:31 - Talking Technology News

57:48 - Outro

Transcript

0:00

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. Hello everybody and welcome in to Talking Technology with VI Labs episode 108. Hope you're keeping well, hope you had a good St. Patrick's Day. We had a St. Patrick's Day here in Ireland just last week. We had parades across the country and of course there's always kind of different events happening all around the world as well with St. Patrick's Day. It's got such a scale to it now. It's fantastic to see for a small little country. We absolutely do punch above our weight. So if you if you did attend a St. Patrick's Day parade or anything like that, hope you had fun. Hope you enjoyed it. And yeah, hope if you got the day off work as well, hope you enjoyed that too. That can be just as useful too sometimes. But welcome in to Talking Technology with VI Labs. We have a packed show coming up for you over the next hour. We've got updates from Apple that Ongarda Shiokana are warning people about. We will be chatting about some of the stuff from CSUN. That's a conference that took place in the States in recent weeks. It's a big accessibility conference over there. And we'll be catching up with Michael Grimes. Michael Grimes works for Canon Ireland. They do lots of photography, printing. You'll be aware of their printers and stuff like that. And they recently held their tactile graphics and tactile imagery exhibition in Dublin. So we'll be catching up with Michael all about that and about the future of tactile imagery just in general and what it's all about. So a packed show coming up for you over the next hour or so. And we're delighted to have you with us. And hey, a reminder that as always, if you would like to join the conversation, there are loads of ways that you can get in touch with us. You can join the conversation on WhatsApp. You can join the conversation by email. And we would absolutely love to hear from you. So if you want to get involved, we'd love to hear your opinions. People send us opinions on all sorts of things, whether that's new technology they're trying, or maybe they have a thought on something that we've talked about in the newsletter, the Tech on Tap newsletter, or indeed on this podcast. We would love to hear all your views on all of that good stuff. You can send us a WhatsApp if you would like. You can send us a WhatsApp voice note to 086-199-0011. That's 086-199-0011. And remember, a WhatsApp voice note, it's not a call. So you want to use the voice message button. It's labeled with voiceover. And you find it in the bottom right of your screen. You can also send us an email if you'd like to content at vi.ie. That's content at vi.ie. And hey, we would absolutely love to hear from you. So whether you're getting in touch on WhatsApp or email, please do feel free to do so. And to chat about some of the goings on from the week gone by, I am joined from Kilkenny by the one and only Mr. Joe Lanigan. Joe, how are you? Hi, David. I'm all good and refreshed after my St. Paddy's break. So yeah, I'm good. You do anything nice for St. Patrick's Day, Joe? Well, St. Patrick's Day, I brought Freya into the parade. She's only five. She loves parades. The little boy didn't want to go. They're too bored for him already. They start making their opinions that that could age. Yeah, yeah. That's the trouble, you know. He thinks he's a man now, not a boy, but he wants to do his own thing. But we went to the parade anyway, and we got a seat up the front thanks to the Kilkenny County Council and it was all very good. Edward Hayden done the commentary on all the entries to the parade going through and great descriptions from Edward. Edward is famous from TV3 cooking and cooking demonstrations. And he also is on KCLR. So he's done a great job and I really enjoyed it. It all worked out well and we didn't rain held off and we've done well for the day. It's great. That's great. We had down here in Cork, actually, we had audio descriptive commentary on the parade for the first time. So you had the standard commentators and stuff like that as well. You did have that down here. But there was also like a kind of dedicated accessibility area that you could go to. And when you went to the accessibility area, you could can collect a little headset receiver and you could either connect your own headphones to it or you could use the ones that they provided. And the whole parade then was described. There was two describers. There was Kieran and Siobhan. And I must say, both did an absolutely exceptional job, Joe. It really, really was brilliant. The two of them, they kind of alternated the descriptions of the parade. But do you know what? It was just fun. And it was great to be able to engage with it. And it was the first time that Cork City Council had done it. But I honestly couldn't fault it. It was really, really good. And yeah, I just hope they do it again next year and kind of get into the habit of doing it now, you know? Sounds great, I know you might know this, but was there many people that took up that offer of using the audio description or was it just a trial basis thing? Yeah, so they were clear, to be fair, that it was a trial. They said that from the off. I do think it was, from what I gather, it was underutilized. I think they were expecting more people to use it. But I think in time, I only found out about it very shortly before the actual event took place itself. So I suppose it's just a case of them needing to get the word out a bit more and making the knowledge just a bit more broad. Because even, I could imagine lots of people benefiting from that kind of service. Not just people who have low or no vision, but there are going to be plenty of people who are maybe they're older, they're going to be struggling to see different parts of the parade or different details and stuff like that. It could be really widely used, but I don't think it was on this occasion. My worry would be that, you know, if you don't use it, you lose it, you know? So I would hope they come back for another year and focus on the promotion of it a bit more because they got genuinely, they got everything else right. Yeah, I think that, you know, the audio description of these type of events is really important because it does bring that extra bit of inclusiveness. You're not just there, you know, clapping along with everybody else for no reason. You're just, you're included. You know what's going on, you know? And we did highlight a few things in the newsletter recently as well. Like the London Fashion Week had some audio description events and different sports events had it as well. But no, I think the fact that even the local, your local one down in Cork had it, it's a great start. Even to see that audio description coming into a local event. It's great. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, no, I would hope that more people use services like this down the road because I think with audio description in particular, you know, it's not like it's a one and done. There's an ongoing cost to provide that service. So if people aren't using it, it doesn't stick around, and that's the frustrating part. But no, the part that was done. So the team there, Siobhan and Ciaran did a brilliant, brilliant job and it definitely enhanced my enjoyment of the parade. Like I would not have known, like obviously with the level of vision I have, you hear like the bands or you hear the different sounds from different floats or whatever the case may be, but you don't necessarily know if there's walking groups or whatever. You don't know what banner they're holding or who they are representing. So it was just great to have that context, you know? Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, there was actually, there was good representation for people who were blind or visually impaired, at least in the Cork parade. The Irish guide dogs down here, they were the grand marshals for the parade down here. They're celebrating 50 years in Cork. And then there was also an adaptive cycling group as well. So they were showing off tandem cycling and so on and so forth. So there was a good involvement in the parade, which is good. So maybe it was that everybody was marching in the parade and there wasn't enough for the audio description. So who knows? That's all possible. Yeah, I suppose in that case, that's a good problem to have. But yeah, listen, if anybody does have thoughts on the parades or anything that was done in your local area, whether you're in Ireland or indeed internationally, I know they have big parades around the world as well, do send us a message on WhatsApp 086-199-0011. In other news, the CSUN conference took place in the States in recent days and weeks, Joe. There's always some really interesting technology announcements come out of this. Yeah, there is always some interesting announcements. I suppose this year a lot of it was based around AI as was expected, especially when it comes to IRA. I suppose they help push people to do tasks through their app and they give personal assistance through the app and stuff. And they're semi integrated through their Meta glasses, but they made an announcement that they will be fully integrated and you can call them directly through the Meta glasses in by the end of March. Since Meta have opened their SDK developers kit to other developers and IRA is one of those. They've also said that they're integrating with the Astra Google DeepMind AI so they can do some of their interpreting through AI and this won't fully replace any of their agents or anything like that for giving assistance, but will help with smaller tasks that can be done with AI. Have you checked any of that out, David? So I've been on the waiting list for IRA's project Astra for a while and I've not been accepted. So I actually use IRA quite a bit, I pay for an IRA subscription and to their credit actually back to St. Patrick's they were very useful just navigating around the barriers and finding the accessibility area and stuff like that. So I find them really good, but there was a banner in the app for the longest time to sign up for the waiting list for project Astra. So this is the collaboration between IRA and Google. That banner has now disappeared in the app for me at least, but I still don't seem to have access to any of it. So my worry is that is it going to actually come to the EU? Yeah that's the worry. I know this conference is in America, but look I suppose Google is worldwide, I'm hoping eventually it will come. Yeah, it's funny that my worry is it might become too good and some of the visual interpreters will be replaced, but I'm hoping it always just works alongside them to be honest. Because I think AI, and fairness look, it's good for a lot of things, but it's not ready for all of that yet. So yeah, I'm hoping it's just a side angle, I'm hoping it's a side care for the good service that they already provide. Yeah, I do think the great thing with IRA is it's such a specific skillset, and I think that's the value it brings. I know we talked with WeWalk on the podcast last time in episode 107 about their new WeAssist service coming to Ireland as well, and I'll be very interested to see how their visual interpreters or their agents or whatever they're calling them, how they compare. Because I think it's going to be really useful to have some competition in that space and have options for people, but yeah, exciting stuff. That's really important actually to have competition in the space. And I suppose the big thing about the announcement that IRA made at CSUN is the fact that you'll be able to use everything hands-free, there'll be no confirming anything on WhatsApp and making a WhatsApp link to IRA, it'll be just like something like connect to IRA or call an agent or something like that, whatever the command is going to be, and it connects straight with an agent. So it'll be a big addition, I think, to people that love using that service. And I think they do provide five minutes free every 24 hours, something like that. I don't know exactly myself, I don't actually use the service yet, but it's something similar to that. And there is a lot of different places that can go, like certain airports and the CSUN conference itself, where you could use IRA in that zone of their Wi-Fi connection areas, you could use IRA for free all the time in those particular areas. So that was quite a good way of, I suppose, demonstrating to yourself if it works for you or not. Yeah. Notably in the States, actually, they cover the cost in some of the big kind of stores over there like Target and Walmart. They have the, they are called IRA access locations, so you can just use IRA free in those zones. I'd love to see crowds like, I know Tesco over here in the UK have partnerships with like Be My Eyes and stuff like that. I'd love to see kind of an expansion of that to some stores over here, but time will tell you that, you know. Yeah, I know what a supermarket shopping can get a bit frustrating, like, I mean, I know a lot of things on the supermarket, but when it comes to reading the products and all that, I just can't find them. There is on occasion, I might grab a sliced pan and just hope the data is fine, you know, that kind of way. But at least if you had access to IRA or a proper section of Be My Eyes or whatever, you could nearly pick out some of the products yourself rather than going looking for a customer service agent, which can also take time, you know. Yeah. Our local Aldi is, unfortunately, it's like a Wi-Fi dead zone. So even like I was trying to get, you know, it's something simple. I wanted to check, was I holding the vegetable pie or the ham and chicken pie? And like, you know, I was going to use Google Gemini for that, just totally impossible. Just could not happen, like, you know. So yeah, you get limited, but hopefully that sort of thing will improve in the future. Another thing, and it's worth bringing in Daniel here, Mr. Daniel Dunne. There was also Daniel, a really interesting new phone case, but this is the case for Vision Ergo. It's kind of like a magnifier kind of thing. Absolutely. David. Yeah. I had a little look about about this product online, you know, it's it's very interesting. Obviously, I haven't gotten my hands to see, but from what I can see from videos put up about it, it looks to be quite a powerful tool. So what it is basically, it's a protective case that goes around your iPhone, but it also has this clip on a clip on gadget, I guess, for a better word, that can clip onto the case. And what it does is it angles your phone up off a table or a hard surface and allows you basically to use your your iPhone as a digital magnifier, much like your, you know, Explorer five or lucky five or any of those handheld magnifiers that many of us use. It also has another interesting piece on it that is part of the stand. It also has part of pops down and it's probably the wall. It's a mirror which allows allows you, I guess, to angle it. So you know, if you have the TV on a wall nearby, you can actually use that to see the TV on on your iPhone. So quite an interesting magnification accessory, perhaps, yeah, maybe a better word. Yeah. Yeah. And also, it also comes with its own app as well. So you get, you know, you'll get your your app that you can manipulate the colors and the contrasts and all that as well. It's very portable and lightweight. The little attachment is, I guess, it's probably not much bigger than your thumb and you can snap it on and snap it off. It's magnetic clipped in. So it seems very interesting and I'm actually quite impressed with the price. You know, for the case, the app and the attachment piece, it's all in for ninety nine dollars. So probably coming in around 90 euros. Yeah. Before you're in the exchange. Yeah. Before your import duty. But yeah, no, that sounds really interesting. I will be interested to have a play with one of those and see what they're like. Yeah. But yeah, very interesting bits of kit. So it's the case is case for vision.com is the website and it's the case for vision Ergo Ergo. That's that's the product. If you did want to maybe have a look at that in your own time. Absolutely. And, you know, it isn't it doesn't sound like the highest tech solution necessarily, but it's still, you know, really useful. And speaking of those, you know, low tech solutions that can sometimes be quite useful, you know, we always look at things like bump ons and stuff like that as a go to. But Joe, you were saying that Hebel have got a new product line now that is really designed to, I suppose, assist in a similar kind of low tech space. Yeah. Well, Hebel were there at the Seastone as well, and they have a couple of really good products. They were doubling down on their speech labels. We speak of it first and their speech labels come in a few different types. They have laundry ones, which I presume are waterproof, and they have QR code labels and they have the NFC tag labels. They all do the same thing in different ways, but they even reckon the QR code one is the only need to scan something like 10 percent of the tag and it'll still recognize it. So they sound really good. What happens here is you buy a sleeve of stickers, whichever type you would like, you go to their website and you buy a sleeve of stickers, they're around. I think the NFC ones are around 20 euros and the QR ones are a little bit dear at 29, that kind of price range. So they're not going to break the bank and they're really handy for labeling products around the house. So it could be medicine bottles, food items, grocery items, anything really, Tuberware packs. You can label them, then hold your phone close to it, and it will announce, it comes with an app actually, there's an AHABLE app for these labels, so you can put the sticker on, then you can record what the product is with your voice, or else you can type it in, and then you hold your phone near that item, especially if it's the NFC tag, and it'll read out what the item was. So basically a speech labeler item, that's really what that one is for, it's labeling things in your freezer, your cupboards, whatever. So that's the first item, and I think that's really good, and kind of cheap, reasonably priced product for doing a simple task, especially when you have a smart phone out there. Yeah, sounds very much like the old RNIB Pen Friends of yesteryear. Yeah, a bit like the Pen Friend, but you don't need an extra device around your kitchen. You don't have to say, oh, where's that Pen Friend? Because you always have your phone in your hand or your pocket, don't you? That's the big question, where is the Pen Friend? Yeah, where is it? Yeah, where's the Pen Friend gone? Yeah, yeah, you might need an AirTag now on your Pen Friend, you know, it gets really complicated. But anyway, no, at least this is all on the phone, so brilliant, it's in an app, and open up the app, and Bob's your uncle, and you can find and recognize your products. Yeah, so, and then the other one then, we've mentioned these before, different types of tactile stickers, but this one, I think it's called Stactiles, so these are like tactile stickers that you can put on touch screen items in your home, like appliances and things like that. Everything's gone touch screen, as you know, it's just a trend, the way life has gone. Everything is smooth aesthetics and touch screen and built in that direction, and there's only a handful of companies that are thinking of us and putting, building voice, synthetic speech into these items, Lenovo, Samsung might be one of them, and a couple of others, but that's about it. So we have to think of other ways of making our appliances more accessible. So this is another excellent product from Hebel, they haven't actually been released yet, they're coming very soon, but they did talk about them at CSUN, so these little stickers will stick to your touch screens, they'll have arrows, plus and minus, or play symbol, stop symbols, or could be heat, whatever, they have loads of stickers anyway, with different symbols on them and shapes, and some of them have, maybe are smooth and some are rough, just to make, let you distinguish one button from another, and they are, according to Hebel, they're very sticky, they don't come off easily, they're waterproof, which is going to be massive help actually considering you're working with appliances and you need to be cleaned a lot, and this is one of those low tech solutions that I love actually, because I have these kind of bump ons everywhere, but they don't always stay. There was a similar thing before, wasn't there Joe? Yeah, Halo tactile markers, but the trouble is, they're not easy to get over here in Ireland. You can go to certain websites to purchase them, but you could be paying it in customs and it could be double the price over here and postage and all that kind of crap, but at the end of the day, I think, if these are easier to get here in the EU and Ireland, it sounds like they might be a more reasonable option, and I'd love to try them. When they come out, I am going to try them. Absolutely, an interesting one, and time will tell on that, as we say, sometimes it's the lower tech solutions that make the biggest difference. There was also loads of techie stuff, Selvis, they announced a new update there to the Brailsense line up, the Brailsense 7 and there's been loads of different bits on the Braille front as well, lots of talk about the Humanware Braille Not Evolve, so that's the new Braille device there from Humanware, lots of talk about that too. So really interesting stuff, but yeah, I'm really interested to see as well, Be My Eyes have announced the Be My Eyes foundation, this is a new service or a new organisation in fact that they are setting up that wants to really try and improve free access to technology and the world by those who are blind or visually impaired, so very interested to see what that leads to. Be My Eyes seem to announce something new every week, don't they? I think they're just really active in the accessibility world, they're just so busy and trendsetting, so that'll be another interesting one to look at. Absolutely, who knows. So yeah, lots of stuff from CSUN, and there is definitely, you could talk about CSUN all day. I'd love to go to the event at some point, apparently the tickets are like over 500 quid joe, and that's not including your trip to America. But yeah, interesting stuff, and who knows, one of these days maybe we'll get to go to CSUN and explore some of that cool stuff. Anyway though, a reminder that if you would like to get in touch with us, maybe you are interested in some of the items you heard about at the event, we'd love to hear from you, the number that you need there, 086-199-0011 on WhatsApp, or you can send us an email to content at vi.ie. Righto, moving on then, you may have heard, we've talked about it on the podcast before, about the Sight On Scene photo exhibition, notably, I wound up on the news because of this, but yeah, we had the Sight On Scene photo exhibition that took place in Dublin, and these were all tactile images, so they were images that you could feel and they had braille next to them and so on and so forth. Really interesting event, and it was largely organised by the people at Canon, and in this case Canon Ireland, so to learn a little bit more about the event, I caught up with Michael Grimes who did a lot of the groundwork around the event, just to learn a little bit more about tactile graphics, and indeed, World On Scene. So Michael you're very welcome to Talking Technology, so you're working for Canon Ireland, so I guess before we talk about the World On Scene exhibition and all of the really cool stuff you're doing around tactile imagery, do you want to tell us a little bit about Canon first of all? Absolutely, and thank you for inviting me on David, I'm Michael Grimes, I work for Canon Ireland, we're supported by Canon UK, so you know Canon for I suppose cameras, maybe some home desktop printers, maybe some office technology as well, and I suppose there's a lot more to the Canon's kind of bow, over 54% of Canon's global turnover is related to print and information management solutions, so print is huge, and that's not just your home printing, it's everything up to industrial printing, for book printers for example, to flatbed printing which is what we'll talk about today with tactile printing or signage printing or posters, and everything in between there, and there also are some other sides to Canon's business, the information management solutions is huge, we would be very successful here in Ireland within that, and that's making information I suppose work for people, so it would have started initially with storing documents, but really it's about storing information, workflows within that information to be able to help processes, and the likes of approvals etc, e-forms and the likes, and that's kind of where a lot of people don't see the Canon name, although it's under the hood in a lot of projects and organisations across the country. So you're hiding in the background there a little bit, and that's really cool though that you have such a kind of broad range of things that you do, and I suppose some of that stuff can be really interesting, really niche I suppose in some ways, but that kind of brings us on to the really cool tactile imagery exhibition that you held, World Unseen, this was in Dublin just a few weeks ago, do you want to tell me a little bit about how this came about, because it started in the UK I believe. Yeah absolutely David, yeah it started in 2024 in Somerset House, a gallery in England as you say, that was really really successful, and it's actually been displayed now in I think over 32, probably 33 venues across Europe, Middle East and Asia, including the International Drupa which is the print show, the largest print show of its kind in Europe, also at the end of 2024, I can't believe the year and a half has gone from there, so yeah it was really a goal of the team here to be able to bring World Unseen to Dublin or to Ireland as a whole. So you guys, just to understand this then, you guys manufacture and created the printing technology that makes this possible, is that the way I should think of this? Absolutely so, Hanon, some of the technology we have are flat bed printers, so these would be printers that can print on anything really from a leaf to a mirror, to a bedroom door, and everything in between and that will have UV curable inks so that they can be used inside and outside, scratch resistant for example, you would see that even the likes of the back of an aeroplane seat for example, with some signage or instructions, would be printed with the likes of an Arizona. We have a piece of technology called Prisma XL and that software is used for composition but also for creating that elevated print that we spoke about, so creating the height within the print, to create something along the lines of Braille for example, which may go as high as, generally I think Braille would be around 0.5 of a mil high, sometimes it would go as high as 0.9 of a mil, we can actually print up to now I think 4mm high of an image. And it feels, the really interesting thing I noticed is you can create some really interesting textures, like I was able to kind of define, like I wouldn't say you can necessarily tell immediately what a picture is without context, but what you can do is you can tell, once it's pointed out to you, the different sections of a picture by feel because you do have those different textures, like you can feel the difference between say clouds and grass and you know, a person or something in an image, which is really cool. Absolutely, and it's that visual storytelling which made the exhibition I suppose accessible, we used the elevated print and also audio descriptions as well, alongside Braille. So you had kind of the descriptions as you mentioned, whilst you were actually touching and feeling art, which generally you don't really get the chance to do in many exhibitions. Yeah, and what do you think the future looks like for this kind of technology? Will it come to a point where this technology is mainstream to the point where someone who's blind and visually impaired would be able to access prints like this, maybe as a birthday or Christmas gift for someone, you know? That's a really good point David, and yes, and we've had on the back of the event alone, we've had a number of inquiries from different organisations and different groups and people in different industries, looking to see if they could do it on a small scale or a large scale and you know, it is absolutely possible, I mean, the technology is there, you know, we worked with Hackets as our print partner for the project and they've been working probably over maybe a two year period now to be able to understand what's possible and what can be done and looking at other examples from other countries and other printers around the world on what you can do to make artwork, but to make images and to be able to use Braille more in everyday life. So Michael, this technology obviously being used for kind of tactile images and stuff like that, but it also has benefits in areas like tactile packaging, which of course very useful for people who are blind or low vision. Absolutely, I mean, the kind of opportunities are limitless in terms of not only the technology that was used, the machine, the Arizona that was used, we also have other technologies like our Colorado technology, which would print on roll to roll medias that may be what would be called in the industry as litho lamination to kind of, I suppose, attach to a piece of packaging or a box and that can be printed with textured print and that textured print could be, whether it's a Braille description of some kind, whether it's embossing, whether it's kind of 3D maps or if it's a fine art kind of a reproduction that's on the packaging, that that could be elevated and raised to make that, I suppose, more accessible. And does that get used much? We do see it, especially with more, I suppose, high end packaging, where people are looking for that touch and that feel and I suppose something that probably resonates with me internally is if we have events, like World Unseen, we will personally, I feel that touch and the soft touch of a nice piece of material, for example, or a piece of card resonates a lot more with people than sending an email, that feeling and touch and the texture, for example, you know, in a way makes you feel good about what you're going to look at or what you're going to see. So again, it's something that can be done and is done even as far as, you know, we have people who are printing wallpaper now that would be, you know, a flat surface that is then created with flex shot or a textured print application to actually raise that image as well. And again, that could be used in many different ways. You know, it's really down to the imagination and graphic designers really bringing that to life. Yeah, you could use even tactile wall guides and stuff like that. There's so much potential there. And where can people find out more about tactile imagery, Canon Ireland in general? Where can people find out more about all this stuff? Yeah, I mean, people can contact us directly at Canon. You can look on our website and Canon www.canon.ie and you know, we will be more than welcome to talk to people. Hackett's actually have the technology here in Ireland and they're based in. They have an office in Cork, Dublin and Limerick and they'd also be an option to reach out to. But look, we're more than happy to talk to people around what's possible, what can be done and hopefully, you know, elevate to use that word again, the opportunities to make images and to make signage more accessible for everyone. Super stuff. Michael, thank you very much for the conversation. Really interesting one as always. And thank you for joining us on Talking Technology. Brilliant. Thank you, David. Thanks again to Michael Grimes and indeed the entire team at Canon for that conversation. It's really interesting just learning more about what's happening in this space and learning how kind of new technology can help out in this space. I know, you know, there's been a few attempts before and sometimes it's easy to feel a bit jaded by, you know, so many attempts to try and make tactile imagery or tactile graphics, you know, more mainstream, but I think, you know, what Michael's saying there about how this can be used in packaging or in signage and all of these different things, I think it's really, really interesting. So best of luck to them with that. A reminder that if you would like to get in touch with us, maybe you got to go to the World Unseen exhibition or you've experienced it in the past, maybe in some other countries, we've done tours about the place in recent years, as Michael was saying, you can find out more on their website, but you can also send us an email or a voice message with your thoughts. The number that you need there 086-199-0011 on WhatsApp, or you can send us an email to content at vi.ie. But other than that, let's cross now to Daniel Dunn for your latest Talking Technology news. This is Talking Technology news. So with your latest Talking Technology news, I'm Daniel Dunn. Ireland's National Police Service on Garlishie O'Connor are warning people to update their iPhones as a result of a new virus ominously called Dark Sword. In a statement shared to social media, the service said, mobile phones are part of our everyday lives and a new virus has arrived which targets the system that powers Apple devices. So what you need to know, our devices are infected by compromised websites or infected links that inject malware and bypass the standard protections on the phone. Users don't receive any notification that the device is being compromised as the malware works silently in the background with no effect on the phone's operation. The malware primarily targets Apple devices running iOS versions 14.8 all the way through to 18.7 and allows attackers to access content, messages, contacts and credentials stored on your phone. What you can do to protect your devices, Apple has released patches to account for the vulnerability and users are advised to update their devices to iOS 26.3.10 or 18.76 to fully protect their phones. Enabling lockdown mode in the device settings will give stronger protection, but this may limit some functionality. Anyone finding themselves a victim of the malware should consult a competent cyber security professional and report a crime to their local guard station. From our perspective in Vision Ireland, it's always good to keep your phone up to date. However, we are well aware that some people may not want to upgrade to iOS 26 as they may find a new liquid glass design harder to see. If this is the case, it's worth keeping in mind that you can choose to update to a newer secure version of iOS 18 instead. You can select this from the software updates section in your settings, although you may be prompted to update to iOS 26 and need to navigate a little further to find the alternative option for iOS 18. It's nothing to be concerned about as viruses like this are exceptionally rare, but if you do need a helping hand updating your phone, please feel free to give the VI Labs help desk a call. The service is open from 9 to 5 Monday to Friday and you can reach them at 1-800-911-110. It's not all bad news for Apple fans though, as the company has released a new updated version of the AirPods Max, called the AirPods Max 2. There is no fundamental change in design, but the new AirPods are getting a lot of the more recent features such as adaptive audio and live translation, and there are improvements to the active noise cancellation and sound quality too. Of course these things can be subjective for people, so time will tell what the reviews will say. The new AirPods go on sale tomorrow. In other news, Amazon is reportedly working on developing a new smartphone. They did try to launch the Fire Phone back in 2014, but it was scrapped very quickly and is widely considered to be one of Amazon's biggest failures. The company took a reported US$170 million loss on their first attempt at a smartphone, but it sounds like it could be coming back for more. Integration with Alexa and the popular Amazon shopping websites is likely, but other than that the details around the phone are very unclear. It's unclear if the devices will run Android or use the Google Play Store, or if they would try to develop their own App Store. There have also been suggestions that the phone could just use AI and have no need for apps in the traditional sense. The truth is, a lot is still up in the air. It would be interesting to see if Amazon could bring anything new or revolutionary to the accessibility space while developing a smartphone. They do have device view screen reader already on some of their devices, but might we see even more screen reader competition, time will tell. Games are required to have accessibility features by law inside the EU now, so there are exciting times ahead for sure. Could you ever see yourself switching to a completely new style of smartphone or AI device, or do you have a loyalty to your existing solution? Let us know with a WhatsApp Vice Note. As always, we have a number of upcoming courses that you can check out here in VIA Labs. So on the 26th of March, we've got Introduction to Entertainment Apps, on the 27th of March, we've got a Technology Support Hub where you can link in with an IT trainer for 15 minutes to ask the questions of your choice, and on the 31st of March, we've got Online Shopping Tips and Tricks. Then Tap and Go Using Your Phone for Everyday Payments is on the 2nd of April, Accessible Podcasts is on the 9th of April, Accessible Mobile Phone Options is on the 10th of April, and Connecting with Others Through WhatsApp is on the 14th of April. These are the upcoming courses that we have on offer, and if you would like to join any of those, please do send an email to training at vi.ie, that's training at vi.ie. Finally, for now, we have a new update that has been released for Metaglasses introducing some new features. Unfortunately, some of the improvements are limited to the US and Canada, but the update is still available for those of us in Ireland too. The new version 1.2.3 update introduces new features in three core areas. You can now get much more information about Snowsports Live Translation is available in some extra languages, and you can have more natural conversations with MetaAI by interrupting the glasses without the need to say, hey Meta, again. The more natural conversation is the biggest update for glasses users, but unfortunately it is only available in the US and Canada currently. Excitingly, however, third-party app integrations on the glasses seem to be getting closer. A number of companies such as Aira and ScribeMe have been showing demos of their tools working on the glasses, so hopefully we should see those improvements coming as soon as possible. How would you like to see the glasses improve? Let us know with a WhatsApp Vice Note. And that's it for now. A reminder that if you enjoy talking technology, please do share it with your friends and consider leaving a review on your podcast app of choice. For now though, it's back to you, David. Thank you very much, Daniel. Wow. Lots in the news there this week. Yeah. So, yeah, Apple, An Garda Síocháin, lots going on there. How concerned do people need to be? You don't hear Apple being targeted much with viruses, but this is certainly one that has crept in on it. I suppose there's a little bit of concern from the point of view that you won't notice it's there. It sits so silent in the background, so yeah, it's definitely one to be aware of if you are running an older version of iOS. Do get on to the updates and updates at least to the iOS 18, latest version of iOS 18, if you don't want to go to iOS 26. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. How concerned do people need to be? Look, I'll put it this way, it's better safe than sorry. So just get in and install the latest iOS update. As we said there during the news, there is reluctancy for people to go up to iOS 26, perfectly understand the reasons for that. But there will be an update for iOS 18 or iOS 17, 16, 15 or 14, because they're the operating systems affected. So the patch update will be there to protect your phone, so you don't have to make that leap up to iOS 26 if you don't want to. So Joe, another story, we didn't cover it in the news script there as well, but there's been a whole lot of drama there, we've actually had quite a lot of people reaching out on this, around Facebook and specifically the Facebook back button. I didn't know a back button could cause so much drama. Oh, when the back button is not labelled David, it's going to cause drama, because this causes a lot of people to close the app, shut it down, open it up again, then lose your place in Facebook where you were. So yeah, Facebook done an update, forgot to label the back button, so it was invisible to voiceover users. Anyone who used voiceover couldn't find the back button, it's usually up in the top left, somewhere like that. Or you could flick left if you wanted to get to it eventually, but now it's not labelled. So I said that a few times there haven't you, but how do we deal with that? Well one way of dealing with it is by doing a thing called a scrub gesture. You can imagine if you had dust on your screen or a little smudge on your screen and you want to wipe it off, that's what a scrub gesture is. Put your two fingers together and do a little scrub, like as you're rubbing something off the screen. Or some of you might say it's like a zigzag gesture on your screen, but I usually do it side to side, scrub, fairly vigorous scrub, side to side and it brings you back one step. So the scrub gesture always brings you back one step in almost all areas, maybe in certain exceptions it doesn't bring you back one step, but most areas like we'll say in Safari, Facebook, a lot of apps that have a back button it'll bring you back one step. So that's the scrub gesture. There is another alternative you can do, you can set up a custom gesture. So there might be a gesture that you never use, so if you find the scrub difficult for you to operate or perform, you can set a gesture to do the same operation. So you can go to settings, then accessibility, then voiceover and then commands and in there then just custom gestures. So you can find, we'll say a two finger swipe left, find that gesture and then you can pick the operation that you want to put that gesture to and then click save. Yeah, and some people put the two finger slide to the left on that one, but whatever one you want really that you don't often use it could be a four finger swipe down or it could be anything really. So yeah, that's it, that's the controversy about the Facebook back button. This could be all blown over by the time the podcast is over because Facebook could do their update and fix that label problem, but at the same time it's good to know the scrub gesture, David. Yes, absolutely. No, good to know. I think it's really interesting from Facebook and Meta and all of those, like they're some of the most widely used apps, Meta of course own Facebook, but also Instagram, WhatsApp, threads, the Meta AI glasses and stuff like that. Like they are embedded in our lives and I know that Meta were hiring for a new accessibility manager there recently. It was a big role, I think it was like over 200 grand a year. Like this was a serious big money gig and someone, you know, like they were looking for somebody clearly talented to come in and just run this accessibility kind of side of things. And like they really do need it because accessibility with this, like it's basically it's public infrastructure, isn't it? Oh yeah. I mean, like we are a public that are using this every day and look at the end of the day, people, some people are addicted to social media and use it all the time. But it's a safety tool too, Joe, like even WhatsApp. What's a safety tool? Oh yeah. As well as that, it's also apart from helping you pass the time, it's also very useful. It's a communication tool. It's for gathering information. It's for advertising yourself. It's for doing loads of different stuff. So whatever way we feel about all these products that Meta own, they are actually very good, especially WhatsApp. That's just an amazing app really. It's for some people it replaces email and stuff, you know, so and it's great for sharing files, voice notes, stories, whatever you want. So no, it is a public service to have to get it right. Other stuff we didn't touch on too much there in the news, but Joe, there were rumours that the Gemini integration with Apple could be coming sooner than we thought. Yeah, that's right, but the trouble is, I suppose we didn't throw it in the news because rumours are rumours and some people say don't believe it's coming until you actually see it on your phone. I think it could have been something like 26.5 or something, that version of the operating system. But I won't be shouting about this until it actually comes on the phone. And it wouldn't be behind this time really because Siri can be can be very hit and miss. It can work great sometimes and does everything you ask it to do. But then the minute your phone goes to the old slow down version of it, whatever that might be and it starts making mistakes, it really does slip up. So yeah, it could do it. It could do it getting help from Gemini very soon. And hopefully I can't wait to try it. Absolutely. I did install the meta glasses update on the glasses we have here in the office this morning. It didn't change anything fundamentally, at least for us. But I think the the exciting one is going to be when those third party apps start coming to the glasses. We talked about Aira earlier on, but there's so much potential Joe, isn't there? Yeah, that's going to be really exciting. And there's another app that a lot of people have been trying lately, ScribeMe. I wouldn't push anyone towards it yet, it's only in demo beta mode. And it's kind of closed as well to newer people at the moment. You can go on a waitlist, but ScribeMe gives you a live assist option. I know it's heavy on the battery, but it will tell you what's happening around you in live in real time. And some people make statements that it's changing their life and all. I'll hold back on that one until I actually get to try it myself, but it does sound very promising. And that is the way things are going. So I think ScribeMe, yeah, it's another one of those. They do have a subscription option as well on that app. And in fairness, doing these kind of things have a heavy cost to them because they're going back to a server which is probably using stuff like OpenAI or any of those other services that GROK or any of those other services that actually cost a lot of money to run. So in fairness, they do have a right to charges for them. But at the moment they're in beta mode and it'll be interesting to see how it goes. Absolutely. Yeah, no, really excited to see how it goes. I'll be very interested to see if we get updates from InVision around this or what they're going to do and how they're going to respond because they, of course, released the Ally Solos back a few months ago. Yeah, they're integrating as well. It is rumored. There is a test version of that as well around. Only very few have started a test already, but InVision will be. No, I know it's 19 for them, but I suppose if they're testing it, they will be on the MetaGlass event as well. Yeah. It's a fair time. I mean, it makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah. Like I bought, like with my own money, so it's my own comment, like I bought the InVision Ally Solos. I haven't found myself using them as much as I'd like. You know, I think there were challenges around. I found them, the way I put it, the best way I can put it, I found the MetaGlass to be just generally smoother for my use cases at least. And I know some people found them better with reading and stuff like that. I just found the MetaGlass to be a better user experience for me and also at a better price point. But I am very interested to see what the InVision technology can actually do on the actual MetaGlass. Because InVision at its core has been a software company. You know, like they have never, like they worked on Google Glass and then they had the Ally Solos glasses, which are of course based on the Solos tech. So this is for them, just another pair of glasses that is pretty good, pretty affordable in fairness. You know, comparatively speaking, when you factor in that the old, you know, InVision glasses were two, three grand at times. So it's going to be very interesting to see what actually comes of that, you know. Yeah, that's an interesting comment you made at the end about the price. MetaGlasses have really changed the landscape as regards price point. Like people have stopped buying things like Arcam and all that kind of stuff. And any of those things that do cost over the two and a half, three grand mark. So that's kind of blowing all them out of the water mainly because you can integrate things into this for a totally different price point basically. An affordable price point would put that between the four and 500 euros mark depending on whether you go for transition lenses or not. And they look cool as well, which is always a bonus. End of the day, Ray-Ban is a fashion brand and they just now happen to have this technology included. I do wonder when Apple eventually, and it's almost an inevitability at this point that they'll enter the camera glasses game, maybe under the AirPods brand or something. I do wonder, will they drive the price up again? But time will tell on that, you know. Yeah. And Google are coming back with one before the end of the year as well. So I know we might have it in our news the next time around, but there will be a lot of competition in this area. And competition, as I said earlier, about one of our other topics is always a good thing. Yep. Absolutely. Daniel, you were going to come in there? Yeah. So that's going to be very interesting when Apple enter the smart glasses and will they also send, you know, the backbone behind the AI behind the glasses, will that be also Gemini? Great point. Yeah. Who knows? It's going to be interesting. Well, that's only natural. I think if Siri, if you're going to be calling out, Hey, yes, I don't want to say that. I won't activate everybody's phone because I stopped to stop to listen to us. But if you're going to be saying them words and they're going to use Gemini on a phone, it's only natural. Really, isn't it? I think messing aside, wouldn't the Siri Spectacles be a brilliant name for the devices? Like way better than Apple Glass or something like that because they already have Vision Pro. So like, you know, yeah, the Apple Spectacles, I don't know. Who knows? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Look, you can think of many cool names. That's one of them. Siri Specs. Who knows? Air Specs. Air Specs. Ooh, that's good. That's good. I like that. I like that. Air Specs. Apple, you can send me the check. The check is in the post. The royalty check now. The check is in the post. Air Specs. I like that. That's good, actually. Yeah, that's good. Well, hey, what would you call the glasses from Apple? If you were in the Apple branding department or do you have any thoughts on any other glasses coming down the line or ones that you've tried, we'd love to hear your thoughts. You can send us a voicenote 0861990001 on WhatsApp or you can send us an email to contentatvi.ie. But other than that, thank you so much for listening. That is our show for this week. You can find full details about some of the upcoming courses that we've got on the upcoming events section of the Vision Ireland website. That's really handy if you're listening after the fact because some of the stuff that Daniel mentioned in the news might be out of date at that point, but all the latest courses are always available on the upcoming events section. You can also sign up online for our technology newsletter, Tech on Tap. We publish that every Thursday now. So we used to do it on the Friday, but now it is on Thursdays. So you can sign up for that as well. Just search Labs Newsletter Sign Up from Vision Ireland on Google and you will find that there as well. So loads of technology content from Vision Ireland. We really do appreciate you listening, sharing both sharing the podcast with friends and sharing your thoughts as well with us. We really do love that. So thank you so, so much. But for now, that is our show. We hope you have a great week and we will be back in two weeks time for another episode of Talking Technology with Vialabs. See you then. Bye.