What is Aira? And how does visual interpreting work? Talking Technology episode 109

On this episode of Talking Technology, we discuss the world of visual interpreting with Aira. 

Jenine Stanley discusses what Aira is and how the platform works, sharing exciting news on the future of integrations with the Meta glasses.

We also hear from Rebekah, who is a visual interpreter for the service. She shares what kind of tasks people use Aira for as well as some of the coolest things that she has got to describe.

We hear about a new virtual town for Braille users, complete with an AI-powered bartender, and could Be My Eyes volunteers help you run a marathon?

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

To call Aira support in Ireland the number that you need is 1-800-851 255. To sign up you use the Aira Explorer app.

0:00 intro

2:24 voice notes

21:22 what is Aira? A chat with Jenine Stanley.

40:00 visual interpreting chat with Rebekah

53:53 Talking Technology News

71:47 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. And 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. As you do every week. Hello everybody and welcome in to Talking Technology with VI Labs, episode 109 for the 7th of April, 2026. Hope you're keeping well. It's been a crazy few weeks here in Ireland and around the world. We've, and even outside of the world, believe it or not, we've been sending people to space and everything in the last little while. I don't know if you've been watching the news, but we've been sending people further into space than we have ever gone before. And it just goes to show, doesn't it? That we talk about one specific kind of assistive technology and technology in general on this show, but really and truly like there's some incredible stuff going on out there. So yeah, really cool to see what is being going on in the world of technology. And fascinating to just observe some of the cool stuff that people are getting up to, even going to space. But hey, welcome in to Talking Technology, episode 109. We're not gonna be talking about space all day on this show. We instead are going to be having a really interesting conversation later on with the team behind Aira. And we'll be learning what they do, how it works. And we will also be catching up with one of their visual interpreters. Rebecca will be joining us later on to tell us about some of the coolest things that she has got to describe through people's phone cameras over her time working as a visual interpreter at Aira. We'll be having a chat with Rebecca later on in the show as well. So we've loads coming up over the next hour or so. So please do stick around. And hey, why not, maybe if you feel like it, join the conversation. We'd love to hear from you. So if you want to join the chats, you want to send us a message. Maybe you've got thoughts on something that we discussed or something you saw in our newsletter. Or maybe you've got a new piece of tech that you're trying out and you want to tell us all about it. We'd love to hear from you. You can send us a voice note on WhatsApp, if you'd like, the number that you need there. 086-199-0011. That's 086-199-0011. Or if you would like to do it by email, you can send us an email to content at vi.ie. That's content at vi.ie. So whether you would like to get in touch with WhatsApp through a voice note, remember, a voice note's not a call. You want to use the button at the bottom of your screen. Or you would like to get in touch by email. You can send that to content at vi.ie. There are loads of ways to get in touch. So please do join the conversation. Now, usually we have Joe to go through some of the voice notes, but on this occasion, Joe is taking a well-deserved break. And we are delighted to be joined by Mr. Daniel Dunne. How are you, Daniel? Oh, good, David. How are you keeping? Not too bad. You escaped the news boot. I have, just temporarily, I believe. I think Joe is having a well-earned break. I hope he's enjoying the rest of his Easter eggs. And perhaps he's out in the sunshine. It's a lovely, sunny morning here. So, or maybe he's gone further afield. Wherever you are, Joe, and you're listening in, I hope you're enjoying it. I'm sure he is listening in as well. So yeah, that would be awesome. Tell me, Daniel, did the Easter bunny come? Oh, yeah. The Easter bunny came? Absolutely. That is fantastic. He, I had to do, stage a bit of an intervention to get Easter eggs myself. But I got a lovely chocolate button Easter egg for myself. And it was really cool. So yeah, but there you go. But anyway, let's get down to business, shall we? We've had loads of voice notes in over the last little bit. Starting off with Derry Lawler. Derry got in touch with us because, I think Derry was reading an article that we had in Tech on Tap, or at least he was touching on similar topics. This was on HBO Max last week. We were talking about HBO Max launching in Ireland, this new streaming service. And Derry had some notes to share on some of the streaming services that he has used. Hi, David and Joe, hope you're keeping well. Yeah, so I've been using Netflix for some time now. And I do like Netflix on the iPhone and I use on the Apple TV. Now recently, Sky Q, which is what we have, gave us Disney and HBO Max. Now I'll sign up to those, but the Disney app is totally inaccessible on the Sky Q. But so I do use the Disney app on the Apple TV and on the iPhone, but there's not much on the Disney. And HBO Max is very good too. I got that recently and I had it on the Apple TV. So yeah, I've got Amazon Prime, Netflix, HBO Max and Disney. I don't have Apple TV, but I do buy movies from Apple TV occasionally. So it's hard to find audio description stuff. I talk the piss now on HBO Max will be audio described, but doesn't cause you to get that turned on, even though I have our descriptions turned on the Apple TV. That's it, keep up the good work and talk to you soon. Thanks so much, Derry, much appreciated as always. Daniel, have you been signing up for all of these various streaming services? I have a subscription to Paramount and Netflix. So yeah, and I kind of hop from one to the other. I have to put it to the advertisers that these streaming services, they're very good at showing good clips and some of the best series that are coming out. And you're going, oh, you know what? I subscribed there for two or three months. Usually take them up in the Opera Watch, watch all of the series binge watching. And then hopefully not forget to turn off the subscription, otherwise you just pick up your bank statement and you go, oh, sure, forgot that. Yeah, yeah, no, I like Derry. I was lucky enough to have HBO Max included with Sky. So got that there recently. And it's actually been really good. I found their app to be really accessible. And to Derry's point, I've also started watching the page. I think I'm like seven episodes in at this point. Now I have got audio description on it though. So I think for me, it didn't work straight away, but it was one of these ones where do you know, you have to turn it on in the player first. And it seemed to remember past that point, but it wasn't automatic, even though it was turned on on my, it was the phone in my case. So not ideal, but once it was turned on, once it seemed to remember it across multiple shows, do you know? Yeah, so basically the app wasn't picking up on the universal setting that you can set in your Apple device settings. No, that's a bit of a pity it didn't link up. Yeah, it's a shame. I've noticed, you know, and recently as well though, that I think things are getting better in this space. RT player now detects if you're a voiceover user and it gives you a pop-up that and it's like, would you like to turn on some of the accessibility features, which I think is a really nice touch. And I think they're doing more work on that as well. So that's really cool. But yeah, no, it's good to see different streaming services showing up. And yeah, hopefully there is going to be more content. It is always a struggle though, because like you said, you've so many of them. Some of them have good audio described content. I personally don't have Paramount because I don't find they have a lot of audio described content for me. Plus I'm salty that they have a show that's literally called Sight on Scene. It's about vision impairment and they haven't got it audio described. I'm a bit salty about that, so I don't have Paramount. But I have a few of the other ones through various means and I find them pretty good. And I definitely think there's more audio described content than ever before now, do you know? It seems to be getting better to space. And look, as opposed to the question that's on everyone's lips about audio description is, how far off is AI audio description? How far away is it? See, I think it's a really interesting conversation. I'm very reluctant to go there though, because I'm so used to hearing AI describe things for work. And when I want to, I almost treat watching something with audio description as like an audio book, do you know? It's something I'm doing for entertainment. And I think it takes me out of the experience if I'm hearing a text to speech voice. That's just me. Some people disagree. I think maybe you're saying there is not necessarily AI, it's just the quality of it. The quality of the voice maybe will be the drawback on it. That's part of it, yeah, that is part of it. I suppose, look, I'm open to whatever the future holds, but I hope that the quality is maintained. And right now, I do think humans are the way to go. And I think we just need investment in that space to have really good audio describers, do you know? I think we can all agree on that over there. Absolutely. So, Derry, thank you so much for the voice. Now, if people do have thoughts on some of the streaming services that you've used, or what the best audio description you've ever heard was, do send that in to us, 086-199-0011, or you can send us an email to content at vi.ie. We also have a voice note in this week from Jodie. And Jodie was right on cue. I think Jodie must have known that we were talking about Aira, because she actually had a question about Aira. And here is what Jodie had to say. Hi, I just had to jump in and ask a question about Aira. I started choosing it the other day, only just. And I think it seems really good in practice, because we don't have to worry about keeping a Be My Eyes volunteer on the call for ages for those more big tasks. But I'm wondering if there are any apps similar to Aira that do longer than five minutes, or if there's an easy way to subscribe that doesn't cost a crazy amount of money. Because it seems great, I think, that they can do navigation, for example, and help you get to where you need to go. But you're not gonna be able to do that in five minutes, or even 20 minutes, a lot of the time. So I guess I'm just wondering what people thought there on Aira, when you use it, and if you foresee them, hopefully make more realistic prices. I would happily pay 20, even 30 Aira a month if it gave me unlimited call time with an agent. But having to pay $300 plus is crazy. But at the same time, I love the descriptions that they give. I love that they have such good detail when they're telling you things. But not only is it only five minutes, but it's five minutes every 48 hours, which just isn't feasible for most people, but also the crazy prices aren't feasible for most people. So I'm wondering what your thoughts are, and if there are any cheaper alternatives that offer kind of similar services. Thank you. Thanks so much, Jodie. And yeah, so it's a really interesting one, because I think the price is the biggest drawback to Aira. I suppose the price comes from that whole having a professional service and those people needing to be paid a fair wage, I guess. But I suppose the only other professional alternative that exists right now, and it's funny, it only launched in Ireland a week ago, so it's definitely worth a try, is WeAssist from WeWalk. And we had the guys from WeWalk on the podcast either last episode or the episode before. And I think it's well worth having a listen to that and then trying out their service. I'll be honest, I have tried it once since it launched, and it kind of let me down, unfortunately, because I felt I was waiting just way too long. You know, I was waiting a number of minutes. And in the end, I just gave up and called Aira again, because Aira has never, to their credit, let me down in that way. So look, it's worth a try. And I think as WeWalk and WeAssist learn and improve, their service is only going to get better. I think this is probably teething problems. But at the same time, it wasn't a fantastic first impression, if I'm honest. As for Aira though, you know, Aira, yes, it's a very expensive service in my view. It can be quite pricey. I do pay for the service. I pay, I think it averages around 22 or 23 euros a month, depending on how the dollar is doing. And in that, I'm getting five minutes free every 12 hours as opposed to every 48. And I'm getting an additional 20 minutes on top of that to use as and when I need it. Now, what I would say is for me, I do find that most of what I'm doing with Aira, I can get done quite quickly. Even with navigation, the way I use it, it's to get to the last point, you know, it's to find the door after I've navigated to a point. I guess, you know, you can use it in all sorts of different ways. It really depends on how you use it. I would say that, you know, in most cases, it's much quicker than say a Be My Eyes call because the fact that they're trained and as Jodie mentioned there, they're really good at describing. So they are quite efficient, but there's no denying it is a premium service. It is kind of the, it is the luxury equivalent, if you will. But with that, I must say like they've never let me down. So it's a tough pill to swallow, but it's one that for me, I do find their entry level plan worth it in that respect. Yeah, it's kind of a platinum service. And like the people on there, they're trained. So they've gone through a training program at the expense of a company like Aira. So, you know, they're hiring people, train them up and, you know, the quality of the call you're getting at the end. It's no surprise to hear that the cost of the service provision then racks up, but on the flip side, as you said, David, you know, the quality is there. It's, you know, it is probably in a niche area of the market where it's offering absolute premium top quality service. And unfortunately, the high price reflects that for the more serious user from the plan you described there for 22, 23 euros a month, less than a euro a day. And you are, you're getting technically 10 minutes every 24 hours, five every 12. Like that's not bad going, you know. So that might be an attractive option for the caller. Yeah. And also, you know, as you say, we assist their coming into the space too. Maybe there'll be a competition coming in, will help bring down the prices somewhat. Yeah. But you got to appreciate too that their input costs, which in effect is mostly labor, you know, paying employees their fair wage, their time for delivering the service. You know, there's only so far competition can bring those costs down, you know. So yeah, I wouldn't be thinking that the $399 plan is going to be down to $50 or something like that. Yeah. But maybe it'll bring it back a small bit. I think what could make a massive difference for a company like IRA, in particular in somewhere like Ireland, would be just more support for, they have these IRA access locations. And we don't have these in Ireland at the moment, but it's four kind of popular locations, like your supermarkets and stuff like that, where they... Is this the one in America where Walmart are... That's right, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they have like Walmart target as well, and they will cover the cost of IRA. So as soon as you're in a location, IRA is free to use in that kind of location, which is great. And I love that model because that way, it's the company like a Walmart or a Target is paying for the IRA minutes rather than the actual user. So that makes a big difference, but we don't have that in Ireland. That's something that, you know, like we have major supermarket chains in this country, and I think the first one to maybe approach IRA and say, hey, we want to do a deal just like you have with Walmart and Target in the United States and roll this out to Irish customers in the supermarket. So I think that's going to be a huge thing to see happen. Hopefully, it will. Yeah, it sounds like easy marketing too, you know? Like it seems like an obvious win in my mind. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, like would... You know, here's a question for our listeners. Would you switch your supermarket if you thought you could get free assistance from an IRA guide while you're in that supermarket? Yeah. That is a serious question. It's a good question. I suppose, would it be the only factor for me? No. You know, like it comes down to cost too and what you're near and stuff like that, but it would definitely... It will probably make me more likely to shop at a supermarket, I would say. Exactly, yeah, I think so. I think so, I think... It'd be interesting to hear people's thoughts on that. Maybe that's one for our WhatsApp voice notes too. Absolutely. Voice notes, people, 086-199-0011. That's 086-199-0011 or content of vi.ie. Would you be willing to switch supermarkets if you found that it had IRA or even just better assistance in general? I know some people, some service users that I've talked to over the years, will shop at premium kind of locations because they find the assistance better. And I find that interesting. And if you've got the money, brilliant. But it just goes to show that there are people who do consider that stuff. Absolutely. So, yeah. Well, Jodie, thank you so much for the voice message. A really interesting one and leads really nicely into our next topic, which is indeed learning more about IRA. We didn't plan this at all. We had actually recorded with IRA before we received Jodie's voice note. But there you go. Sometimes life just does weird and wonderful things and you gotta love it. But I did last week catch up with Janine Stanley who takes care of a lot of the community and marketing stuff over there at IRA. And we discussed all about the service, how it works, how it all operates. And here is everything that you need to know. Joining me now on talking technology, I am delighted to be joined by Janine Stanley from IRA. Janine, how are things? Hi, very good, very good. Excellent stuff. So Janine, let's start at the beginning. It's a good place to start. For those who don't know what IRA is, what is IRA? Certainly. Well, IRA is a visual interpreting service. And if you think about sign language interpreting, we're very similar except for visual aspects of your environment. So we have professionals who are employees of the company who are trained. They are vetted by us. They sign numerous confidentiality agreements and they come to you through software. We have a phone app for both iOS and Android. And we also have a web app that you can use on your PC or Mac or other tablet if that's the way you prefer. And basically a lot of our customers say it's like having eyes in your pocket, but we are secure eyes because we take a lot of security measures to keep your data and your calls very, very private. So in terms of then that having eyes in your pocket, what are the kinds of things that people use IRA for? So let's say I have something visual that it's that kind of, it's that point you need assistance with something. There's nobody available. How does IRA work in that context? Right, so anyone can set up a guest account with IRA and you get a free five minute call every 48 hours. So automatically you have that free five minutes. You can take advantage of any of our access offers. And sometimes it's a very short task. I dropped a pill on the floor. I can't find it. I need help before the dog gets it or it becomes a cat toy. So, or I need to read the directions on this frozen dinner, or I need to set up something in my house. Maybe I recently set up my home security system with IRA helping me through the phone camera or through smart glasses now. So we'll talk about the smart glasses in a second because that's of interest to a lot of people, but something then that I found really interesting is you do have what you call IRA access location. So there are times when IRA is free for that five minutes every 48 hours. People can also pay for an IRA subscription kind of like a phone plan to get a certain number of minutes, or companies can pay for IRA as an accommodation. How do all of those three different things work? Correct, so our free tier of IRA, our guest users, get access to everything in terms of free IRA sites, for example, stadiums, colleges. We have some free offers though that are also helpful. IRA access offers such as our job seeker offer. So if you are looking for a job, you can take up to 30 minutes a day to have an IRA visual interpreter help you with things like formatting your resume, looking at outfits for interviews, even maybe doing some test interviews with the interpreter and also navigating to your job site. So you're going for an interview, you get to the building and you have no idea where to go. And that's when you can bring a IRA under the job seeker and say, can you help me get to this place in this building? Definitely do that. We also have a small business offer and this one is funded by Intuit. They're the folks that make QuickBooks and they have funded this offer to support blind entrepreneurs. And you register your small business. This is international, so not a problem there. You register with our customer care team and you can get 150 minutes per month to work on small business tasks like inventory, like let's see, bookkeeping, web design and dealing with tax forms. That's a big one here in the US right now, getting your taxes in. Awesome stuff. So then let's say as well, and this is what I do, is I also pay for a small kind of monthly subscription to IRA and that gives access to, you know, you can get a five minutes free slightly more regularly but you also have some then kind of spillover minutes that you can use too. Absolutely, and you can use those minutes anytime. They don't roll over from month to month but you get a free five minute call every 12 hours if you have a plan, one of our payment plans. And I encourage anybody who is considering getting a payment plan so they can get a few more minutes to do things like navigating. That's a big use for the payment plans. To contact our customer care team because we often run specials. We have discounts, various things for people. So be sure to give them a call before you consider plans. Awesome stuff. So then we'll move on to the glasses in a minute but one of the things that you touched on there was using the web app and using IRA through a computer. How can a visual interpreter assist with things on a computer? Because this is something that other services like Be My Eyes and stuff like that can't do. And probably if we're being honest, shouldn't do based on volunteers. Yeah, yeah, security is a huge aspect of what we do. And in order to access your computer and be able to control it remotely, you would be using, oops, sorry about that. You would be using something like a team viewer or remote incident manager or Microsoft quick assist if you're on a Windows machine. And that will allow the interpreter to not only see your screen but also control your computer. Now, unfortunately, we can't do that on the iPhone. We can only do it on limited Android models but we can do it a little bit more easily there. But you can also just share your screen with one of our visual interpreters and they can do things like describe videos, describe items, if you are online shopping. I like Etsy, the site for small businesses that do all kinds of things. And I want to know what their products look like. So I can call a visual interpreter and say, describe this thing to me or I have a list of things here. I'm looking for X. Can you tell me if you see it in this list? So there are just endless uses for this kind of thing. And I noticed as well that you also have, I know you mentioned that you can't do the remote control through the iPhone and stuff like that, but you can share a file with Aira through the mobile app. And then presumably a visual interpreter can assist in editing that. You have a new stuff for editing PDFs and things like that as well. Yeah, we just added to our, I'm sorry. Excuse me, I'm going to sneeze. We just added to our customizing call feature, the ability to edit PDFs. Now all of our visual interpreters can edit PDFs to a certain point, but a few of them have additional skills and the additional software to do some more advanced things with PDFs. So if you need to set up a PDF, you need to make it look good, you need to have certain form fields in there, we can definitely help out with that. And that is on a button on your home screen that reads customize your call. And there are a number of choices in there for you when you are making a call. And that way you'll get the visual interpreter that's qualified to do that kind of thing. Even for filling forms and stuff like that, you can send a PDF in or something like that and presumably go through that with an interpreter. Yes, and you can send a message to the visual interpreter. There's a little text box right on the home screen where you can say things like, well, there's a checkbox that says I can't talk right now. So the interpreter will not be expecting you to answer, but maybe expecting text. And this is really helpful for anyone who is deafblind and using a Braille display, this is hugely helpful. So they can communicate via text message. You can put a website in there, you can attach files, photos, whatever you need to attach for that visual interpreter to assist you. And then they can send them right back to you, which is the great part. So they've edited it, they can send it right back, either through the app or via email. That's fantastic, awesome stuff. So Janine, I suppose one of the big things that I suppose it's taken the world by storm for blind and visually impaired people in recent times has been meta glasses. And we've talked on the podcast here before about how the meta glasses are slowly but surely getting kind of third party app support. And Aira is one of the companies that is involved in that and experimenting with that. How far away are we from something like that? And how is something like that going to work? Well, we last October, no, I'm sorry. It was October of 2024 when the meta glasses first really came out with a lot of features. They did partner with Be My Eyes, but we also, because our engineers are incredible, they said, no, no, we can do this. And they designed a workaround through WhatsApp. Now, it's not pretty. I mean, we will tell people the way that we're doing it is not the way that we eventually want to do it. So going through the WhatsApp app, you can contact a visual interpreter and have them use the camera in your glasses now. But in the extremely near future, we are hoping absolutely by the end of April, 2026, we will have a third party solution, a third party integration with meta AI glasses, all the different types of their AI glasses. And that will not require you to go through WhatsApp. You simply enter the Aira app, call a visual interpreter, and it automatically knows that you are using meta glasses as your camera. And so you are set up. If you have a Siri command, you can say, hey Siri, call Aira Explorer. And now watch, my Siri will go off across the room. But you can do that. So you've got the voice control as well. And we're excited. It's been in beta for about a month and a half now. And our beta testers love it. So we are just awaiting some final approvals to take that live for everyone. Super stuff. And speaking of things that are in beta as well, I do want to ask about Project Astra. So this is your new AI tool. Do you want to tell me a little bit about this? Cause this was a collaboration with the people at Google. Yes, absolutely. You may remember last year at the Google IO event, it was announced their various AI tools. Project Astra is one of them. And we are working with the Google DeepMind team. And the way that works is you will apply to be a trusted tester. And when you apply, of course, Google chooses you from our group. We have around 1,200 people that signed up. And we've got about 900 of them now in the trusted tester program. And this AI is very similar to a Gemini Live or a Chat GPT Live. But the difference is that it is built around the needs and the capabilities of blind and low vision people. And in other words, it's not going to say things like, I can't read that, you need to get someone to help you. And I've had an AI say that to me. That was not pleasant. So we are looking at things like that, training the model to give you more appropriate direction to be able to recognize things faster because speed is a thing with AI. And I think you're going to be very pleased with it when we are able to make it public. Super stuff, and is the hope that, and you may not know the answer to this just yet, but will that be in the EU as well? We hope so, yes. We're designing, we're working with Google. Right now, the beta program is only available in the US, Canada, and Australia, I believe. I could be wrong on the Australia. I know it's available in the US and Canada. And you can go to our website and just type in the search project Astra, and that will get you to our page about the project. And you can actually sign up if you haven't already. If you have already and you haven't heard anything, don't sign up again because we know you're out there. But that particular project is in addition to one of our features that we've had since 2024, and that is Access AI, which is our image description feature. And I almost forgot about that one, but it's one I use literally every day. And the great thing about Access AI is you can get a human verification. So you can have someone verify the response. And I've used this a few times, even just to check if different images are aligned in a document and stuff like that. It's very useful for that. Yes, absolutely. And that's something that will come with the Aira AI Project Astra experience as well, that you will be able to get a live human visual interpreter in there if you think the AI is going astray, or in the case of Access AI, if you think the description is not quite adequate, you can actually get that photo verified, or you can connect with a live visual interpreter to talk with them one-on-one. Super stuff. So Janine, if people want to learn more about Aira, how can they find out more? I presume you can just download the apps and all of that sort of stuff as well. Sure, you can download our app. It is in the App Store for Apple, the Google Play. Believe it's called the Play Store now. I think they've changed the name on that, but it is with Google Play as well. On your computer, you can go to Explorer, which is what we call our customers, explorers. Explorer.ira.io. So that's E-X-P-L-O-R-E-R.A-I-R-A.I-O, and that will bring up our opening page. You can type in your credentials if you already have an Aira account, and it will look the same as the phone app. You can also go to our website, which we are constantly updating and changing, but it holds tons of information, and that is ira.io, A-I-R-A.I-O. You can reach our customer care team, who knows everything about everything, including the meta glasses. Actually, I think they all have meta glasses at this point, but you can reach them by email, support at ira.io, and we do have an 800 number, and I'm not sure if I have the international version of it, but I can give you the 800 number here, which may get you there. It's 1-800-835-1934. Super stuff, and we'll get the Irish equivalent and pop that in the show notes as well. Janine, thank you so, so much for joining us. Always great to hear about Aira, what the company does, and very interesting to hear where things are going with things like Project Astra and the meta glasses. But for now, thank you so much, and hopefully we'll do this again sometime. Oh, I hope so. Thank you, David. Fantastic to learn lots more about Aira, and great to catch up with Janine as well. Thanks so much for that, Janine. Yeah, a really interesting service, I must say, and a really cool tool. Do you know, it's all about having tools in the toolbox, isn't it? There are certain things where you're just going to use a screen reader, and then there are other things where just having a tool or someone even to assist. We see this even with the Vision Ireland help desk sometimes. Someone is struggling to, whether it's book a flight or whatever. It's very useful to have just an extra pair of eyes for that kind of thing, isn't it? Absolutely, absolutely. And as we mentioned there before, those two interviews, it is a niche service, and being able to lean on that at specific times or specific jobs is great, it's a great option to have. For sure. And it's now time, we will catch up with Rebecca. Now, Rebecca has a really cool job. So Rebecca is one of the people, they call them visual interpreters. These are the agents that actually describe the stuff for people. So you call Aira on your phone, and you will reach someone on their team who will be able to describe stuff for you. And Rebecca has taken many of those calls, and we caught up with Rebecca to learn a little bit more about their training process, and also some of the cool things she's got to describe. Joining me now on Talking Technology, I am delighted to be joined by Rebecca, who is a visual interpreter at Aira. Rebecca, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, David. So Rebecca, I suppose the first question, I suppose, we talked with Janine about what visual interpreters do and stuff like that, but it's interesting to get your perspective. What are the kind of tasks that you find people kind of use a service like Aira for? Everything. If you can think of it, we can assist with it. I tell all of our new explorers when they're onboarding, when you're in your first couple of weeks using our service, if you're sitting around thinking to yourself, gee, I wonder if Aira can help me with this, just call, because the answer is most likely yes. So the typical tasks that we accomplish, most of our calls are done within two minutes. Most of the around the house tasks, like identifying medication, microwave instructions, reading the mail, troubleshooting your technology, like your television, you've changed the inputs, and we can figure that out. Identifying dropped items that in your home, where are my earbuds? I spilled an entire can of cherry tomatoes. Can you help me pick those up? Cleaning up after pets, all sorts of visual tasks within the home. Then additionally, the higher level tasks, like navigating through challenging environments, airports, hospital environments, public transit, all sorts of outdoor tasks like that, going for a leisurely stroll in the park, providing additional visual information about the surroundings, what color are the flowers? Are the trees in bloom? Is this particular sidewalk going to connect with another sidewalk? We also remote into your computer to assist with inaccessible websites, to do online shopping, to provide delivery services. I can also geo-locate you with your GPS to provide real-time data in where you are in the world, regardless of your familiarity with your environment. So if you're dropped off at a bad Uber location, I can get you to the proper door that you're trying to go to. If you can think of it, we can help you accomplish it. Absolutely. So one of the big differences between something like Aira and the volunteer-based services like Be My Eyes is the training. So from your point of view as a visual interpreter, what's that training like and how in-depth is it? Absolutely. It was one of the most challenging trainings that I went through in my initial onboarding of any of the careers and jobs that I've had over my life. We are trained on the super high-level stuff that involves safety and security, your O&M training. We get familiar with all of that, but we are not a substitute for that O&M training. So we are also trained on how to provide the proper information in the proper timing that you would need it. We're trained on all of our different tools right from the beginning. And then we are trained throughout our time with Aira as refreshers and as new technology is introduced to us, we get additional training. So the training is ongoing throughout your entire time as a visual interpreter. There's rarely a couple months that go by where you haven't had any sort of additional training. And we are trained in a standardized way to provide the explorer with very specific information that we can then cater to their needs per call. So when a call comes in, it's navigation related, we're going to explain the intersection in a specific way that is standardized every time for every explorer for every navigation interaction. And then if you, David, say to me, actually, I know where I am and I don't need that additional information, then I'm gonna say, excellent, and I'm just gonna provide the obstacle avoidance. We're trained to communicate in one way for a white cane user and in another way for a guide dog user because there's information that your dog will provide that you don't necessarily need from me. We're also trained to give you different levels of description based on your preferences. So if you call in and I see that you only like very small amount of detail, then I'm only going to provide a small amount of detail. If you like rich detail, then I'm gonna give you all the information like what color those flowers are at the bus stop. Sure, wow. So it is very detailed then, which is really, really cool. I suppose, you know, how have, because this industry, it's always evolving too. So how have things like, you know, AI evolved, has that changed the kind of calls that you're receiving? Has it made services, hasn't made people, I guess, more willing to engage with the services or are people using the service for different things now? Yeah, it's definitely changed. I've seen a greater level of navigation calls come through specifically to talk to a visual interpreter while the AI handles things like microwave instructions or mail reading. But what I see kind of universally is that it depends on the specific explorer's level of comfort with the technology. The older explorers are not necessarily going to be interested in, and this is a stereotype of course, but interested in using that AI right off the bat. They want that person that they can talk to so they know for sure that this is an advertisement and not an important government document that they're about to shred. Whereas the younger folks may be more comfortable with the AI interaction. What's great about our AI is that there's always a human on the other end of the call confirming or denying the accuracy of that AI, because we all know AI hallucinates. It sure does. And if you're interacting with IRA's AI and you think, hmm, I don't know, that doesn't seem right. I feel like this is incorrect. You can get a visual interpreter to join the call and that visual interpreter isn't joining from somewhere else. They have been in the call the whole time, observing that AI and confirming or denying its accuracy. So when you ask for a visual interpreter to join that AI call, they have already been present. They have the context. Correct, they have the context. So they will say actually a couple of minutes ago when they said that this was acetaminophen in your hand, that was incorrect information, it's aspirin. And so it's more of a, it's a team effort. It's the explorer, it's the visual interpreter, the human and the AI visual interpreter all working together to accomplish the task. What are some of the coolest things that you've ever seen or done? Has there been times where you've just, something's blown your mind that you've got to interpret? Oh, absolutely. I've been all over the world. It's really cool. In the beginning of my time with Ira, one of the first calls I took was navigating through a butterfly garden in the Netherlands. And I'm in the States, I'm in Tennessee, and haven't been to the Netherlands in person, but I sure did get to go there on that IRA call. And it was incredible. I've been, I've literally taken Hawaiian pictures of Hawaiian sunsets. I, one of the, one of the, one of the sweetest calls that I got to visually interpret was explaining, was describing, was visually interpreting an explorer's engagement ring to them before they used it to propose. And it was, it was so, it was so meaningful to them because they had felt it and they had had the computer describe it, but to hear it from a human being, describe it to them exactly what they, what they were hoping it would look like before they presented it to propose to their soon-to-be bride. It was just beautiful. I've assisted explorers with childcare all the time. These really, really meaningful interactions, like reading a book to their toddler that they haven't brailled yet. So through a Bluetooth earbud, I'm providing them with the text that's on the book and they are, they are then repeating it to the, relaying it to the child. And so they get to have that moment of interaction that they didn't expect they would have with the book that their child brought to them. It's really, there are a lot of, a lot of super powerful, meaningful moments. Ringing the end of chemotherapy bell with an explorer, getting to take a selfie with them when they were finished with their chemotherapy treatment, things like that. That's really, really cool. It's powerful. The human interaction using, being a human tool in the toolbox, it's very meaningful. That's awesome. So Rebecca, I suppose we touched on it with Janine, but how can people find out about Ira? What advice would you give as a visual interpreter to a new explorer? When someone's using it for the first time. Oh, download the app, make the call and have that connection with that human visual interpreter as you go through the initial getting started conversation. Through that conversation, you're going to be blown away by the different things that we can do. My job is to say yes. Your job is to bring me a task that is particularly challenging in that moment. My job is to say yes and make it more efficient. And it's going to shock you. All of the technology that we have at our fingertips at every moment, 24 seven, and the ways in which we make those, that technology work very efficiently. So my advice would be just make the first call. You don't have to have a task in mind. Make the first initial call about an exploration. Sit down, have a minute, have a conversation with the visual interpreter, and speak specifically about the challenging tasks in your life, in your daily interaction. Be it things at home that you're waiting for a sighted person to come over and accomplish with you, or higher level tasks like you use, David, for the navigation, for the airport interaction, for the public transit. My advice would be just make the call and have the conversation. And then talk to customer care about the different levels of subscription and access offers available. And you'll be surprised at the ways in which you can maximize your time, getting your free five minutes and stacking your tasks up, having several things in front of you that we can accomplish in no time at all. Two minutes to read several medicine bottles, a couple of boxes of microwave meals, pair up some socks and read some mail. Two minutes and it's done. We can accomplish a lot of things in a short amount of time. So that would be my advice. Don't hesitate, see how it works for you. The more you use it, the more you find ways it's effective for you. Awesome stuff. Rebecca, really interesting. I must say I do, speaking personally, I do find it a very useful service, but well done to you and all the team. And thank you for joining us on the podcast. Well, thank you for having me. I say it all the time, but I have the best job in the world. People bring me the coolest stuff to do and I get to interact with the most amazing people. So thank you for being an explorer. Great to catch up with Rebecca there. Thanks so much to her for joining us on the show. Do you know, it's great to see some of the cool stuff that she's getting to describe, because it shows that people are just living normal lives, doesn't it? Absolutely. Yeah, and it's great to hear someone speak so passionately about what to do as well. I think, you know, a lot of it are all involved too, and, you know, getting behind and assisting people. I think, you know, it's a great thing to be able to do. Absolutely. So thank you so much to Rebecca for that. Hey, if you want to join the conversation, maybe you have had an experience with Aira, with Be My Eyes, with WeAssist, with any of those tools, we'd love to hear from you. You can send us a voice note on WhatsApp, 086-199-0011, if you would like to do so, or you can send us an email to content at vi.ie. But now it is time to catch up on all your latest talking technology news with the one and only Mr. Daniel Dunne. This is Talking Technology News. So with your latest Talking Technology News, I'm Daniel Dunne. Microsoft is finally officially launching an update for Windows 11 that brings more powerful image description capabilities to the narrator screen reader. Powered by Co-Pilot, you will now be able to perform a single keystroke and have narrator read out any text that exists within an image. Once your screen reader focuses on an image, you can press the narrator key along with Control and D, and you will then hear a description of the image, including any text contained with it. JAWS has had this feature for a while, and it is possible to get similar support in NVIDIA using an add-on, but it is good to have a free version built in right into the operating system too. The update is expected to start rolling out next week on Tuesday, April 14th. Do you find yourself using narrator much? Do let us know with a WhatsApp voice note. Would you be willing to put your faith in a Be My Eyes volunteer to help you run a marathon? 45-year-old Clark Reynolds is doing exactly that later this month, aiming to complete the Brighton Marathon using guidance from volunteers around the world through his metaglasses. He has completed the London Marathon three years ago using the assistance of a sighted guide on a feather, but this will be the first time using his glasses to complete the 26-mile or 42-kilometer run. The volunteers won't be completely random and are being organized by the UK organization Fight for Sight in collaboration with the Be My Eyes. A sighted runner will be on standby to assist should the technology fail, but it's going to be a very interesting story to watch. Clark is no stranger to raising awareness and regularly conducts art workshops with kids in school under his alter-ego, Mr. Dot. The marathon with Be My Eyes is a completely new adventure, with Clark telling the BBC, if you had told me 13 years ago that I'd be an ambassador for a major charity and I'd be inspiring visually impaired children around the world, I'd have never believed you. Time will tell how the technology ultimately holds up, but it is important to remind people to only try stuff like this in a very safe and controlled environment. If you have any questions on how to get involved in physical activity with a visual impairment, you can reach out to our sister organization, Vision Sports Ireland, who will be happy to help. And the Vision Sports Ireland Mayfest come and try day is also just around the corner, with full details available on visionsports.ie, that's visionsports.ie. We have lots of courses on the way, and as always here in VI Labs, there's just a few that might be of interest. So, coming up this week on April 9th, we have accessible podcasts. On April 10th, we've got accessible mobile phone options. Then connecting with others through WhatsApp is on the 14th of April. Booking a package holiday is on the 16th of April. And Microsoft Teams training is on the 21st of April. Explore audiobooks is on the 23rd of April. And we have our monthly technology support hub, where you can get in 15 minutes with a dedicated IT trainer, that's on April 24th. And to finish out the month, we've got meta glasses on the 30th of April. For a complete breakdown of these and to sign up, please visit our website, vi.ie, and under news and events, upcoming events, you can read more details on these, or you can drop an email to training at vi.ie. That's training at vi.ie. And finally, for now, imagine a town just for Braille users. Well, you don't need to imagine it. Blazey Technologies have announced the launch of BT Town, a virtual town environment that can be accessed through the Braille devices, BT Speak and BT Braille. Locations in the town include a tavern, the town square, a private room, a chapel, a games room, and a wharf, with each location having its own sounds. Users can chat in these locations, and some areas have specific functionality, such as an AI-powered bartender. The new town has been added in the March 2026 update and can be accessed from the games section. Speaking of games, the Monarch has also received a number of new gaming applications, including Monarch Chess. It's also getting some Main Street gaming applications, such as Echo Explorer's app from PBS Kids. All of these new improvements are on devices from Humanware, and Blazey are great to see as they provide even more reasons for people to be using Braille for leisure and not just for work. What games do you enjoy playing? Have you found anything particularly accessible? Do let us know with a WhatsApp Vice Note. And that's it for now. Why not consider sharing talking technology with a friend? You can help spread the word by sharing the show with friends via email or WhatsApp. For now though, it's back to you, David. Thank you. Daniel, would you go in a hypothetical world to a town just for Braille users, Daniel? I think it'd be cool. Yeah. You know, there's a great Braille community out there. There absolutely is. Yeah, and I think anything that brings people together, even just in a leisurely way, just to chat about things, flow of ideas, share experiences. I think it's fantastic. And yeah, it's, you know, I like the way they kind of divide it up into sections. You know, there's the bar, there's the, you know, the charge, whatever, all these different things. And, you know, I think that's a really cool, you know, games room as well. I think it's really cool. Yeah, I love the idea. I do love the idea. I think, you know, it's an awkward one to talk about sometimes, but it is very hard, I think, to, especially if you're visually impaired or have a disability. Socialization can become quite difficult. So just having a place, even though, yes, it is virtually, and that's, you know, all well and good, but all of these little places where people can meet and talk, and as you say, just share ideas. Like I remember years ago, Dice World, that dice game used to be huge for that, and probably still is, you know. And I think it's great to just have people, you know, exploring, you know, different communities, but on a device that works for them, and in this case, through Braille, which is really cool. Mm-hmm, absolutely. Yeah, no, I think it's a very, very good idea. And hopefully the Irish Braille community will try it out, and maybe if you do, you give us some feedback as well, yeah. Yeah, I don't know how many people use the BT speaker, BT Braille here, but hopefully there are a few of you, and yeah, you can report back to us on how you get on. We'd love to hear from you on that. There's also some other stuff in the news there as well, around the narrator, getting some improvements on Windows. This can only be a good thing, Daniel. Absolutely, yeah. You know, image description, you know, for all different aspects, whether it's social media, whether it's websites, or do we say the old PDF that has been scanned as an image. You know, it's great to see these AI tools coming in, and being able to basically extract text or describe what's on in that image. As an interesting side project, I've happened upon a collection of newsletters that were going back to the 1980s in where I live, and they were all done in a typewriter, David. Yeah. And somebody about 20 years ago, when scanners came out, had the wisdom to scan them and save them as a PDF, which is brilliant because you're preserving the history. Of course, yeah. But now I'm able to take those PDFs, run them through AI, and have AI type them all up, and my gosh, it's absolutely fantastic. That's so cool. And I will applaud its accuracy. So you can appreciate, you know, photocopy. Basically, this was a typewriter, the whole typewriter, and then that page was photocopied. And then that was scanned. So the quality is really poor, visually. The quality is really poor. But AI has just done such a master job on it. And, you know, it had spat out four pages in 30 seconds. That's incredible. That's so cool. You know, and that is really great to see AI coming on like that. And, you know, that's just one example. I found a fantastic use for it. Obviously, that wasn't related to work. It was outside of work and hours. But I can appreciate anybody that wants to get text from an image or has old documents from years ago. They want to, you know, to redo them, get them through AI, what I can do. You can ask it what to do to it, and it's brilliant. Yeah, that's so, so cool. Yeah, and awesome that, you know, it can be used to preserve stuff in that way. I love that, you know. Yeah, yeah. So, like, no matter how old something is, it can be, you know, AI can actually do work on it and give you back some good quality, you know. That's so cool. Very, very cool. So, yeah, the other story then in tech news is from Mr. Dot himself. What a great nickname. He got this nickname because he was doing Braille stuff, which makes sense. Mr. Dot, I love this. But Mr. Dot, anyway, is it Clark Reynolds? Clark Reynolds. He is running a marathon with the assistance of Be My Eyes. Never in a million years would I run a marathon, not to mind say do it with Be My Eyes. Fair play to him, though. But it takes a serious amount of faith, though, doesn't it? Absolutely, you know, and like, fair play to Clark. And even if, you know, this is what he's endearing to do, it brings awareness, it brings awareness, you know, and it kind of gets people looking at technology as well. It brings awareness that this technology exists. OK, fair enough. He's probably pushing the boundaries of what the tech can do, you know, as in saying, oh, I'm going to use tech to assist me to do a 26-mile run because there's so many variables that can go wrong there, you know, for coverage area, for 4G drops and, you know, for maybe a half-mile stretch. So, yeah, he's doing it responsibly. He's got his sighted assistance on standby with him. So, but I think it would be great to see, you know, how he's going to do a good amount of it. If not all of it using this technology, I think it's great. It brings a spotlight on it and it probably shows, you know, the likes of these smart glass creators, Meta, Ray-Ban, that, hey, your technology is doing so good for people and maybe take a look at this a bit closer and see if there's anything better you can get your glasses to do. And, you know, there's nothing bigger than a huge marathon, like there's going to be thousands and thousands of people in attendance and hundreds in participation. And I think this is a lovely story. It's a lovely story and hopefully it gets noticed by, you know, Mark Zuckerberg or one of his, you know, C-Team, C-Suite team there and say, hey, look, actually, this is cool. This is a good news story. Can we do better? You know, can Meta do better? And hopefully they will on the back of that. I think it's a really cool story. As you said, they're doing it responsibly, which is great. I suppose from my point of view, like, as you said, it might be testing the limits of the technology, especially, I think one of our colleagues in vision sports was saying that there's like 55,000 people. This is a Brighton marathon that he's doing. So 55,000 people there. So it's going to be a struggle on the infrastructure. But I think it's cool. It shows where this technology can go. And, you know, it's only a matter of time before this stuff does start to be used in areas like mobility. So it's good to have those conversations happening early, I think. Absolutely. And to bring focus and, you know, maybe to get, you know, good technology people looking at it and, hey, actually, how can we improve technology and actually bring it in, bring more into the sphere of accessibility? I think, you know, things like this are absolutely wonderful for highlighting it. You know, and just like we said earlier about, you know, how far off is AI going to do audio description on our TV programs? Probably a while away yet, but as I say, the more focus that things, you know, things like this are given, I think the quicker it'll come. Yeah. The big companies will say, hey, you know what? Actually, we can we can do better. We can invest more in it. And they'll see there's a market there as well. You know, it's, you know, like it's almost, you know, it's about creating noise in some respects. And even this story, like it's covered there on the BBC. And, you know, that is on a most fundamental level. That's people thinking about vision impairment that wouldn't otherwise have been thinking about it when reading that article. Absolutely. You know, and that can only be a good thing. It's not. Yeah. If it's not there, it's not publicized. It's very hard to get picked up on. So, yeah, absolutely. Sometimes you have to put the big neon sign up and say, hey, we, you know, look here, it needs to be this, this can be this could be done. It needs to be done. Yeah, absolutely. So well done to to Clark. Well done to the team over at Fight for Sight. Some brilliant stuff there and best of luck. Yeah. Forty two kilometres. That's insane, isn't it? Did you ever do a marathon? Would you ever do a marathon? Twenty six mile. I wouldn't be able to do two point six mile on twenty six miles. So, yeah, unfortunately, at least we know it. I could walk it quite briskly. OK, to two point six mile now, up to twenty six mile. And on that note, we'll move on. Speaking of going places and fast, before we wrap up, Daniel, I do need to ask you if given the opportunity, would you be following in the footsteps of those on board Artemis II? Would you, if given the opportunity, like to go to the moon, sir? If I was given the opportunity, you would have to come in with one guarantee, David, that I will get back safely. Sure. I will go. OK. I would. Yeah. If I was 100 percent sure you'll go, you'll do everything to go without a hitch and you'll be back safe and sound. Why not? Yeah, yeah, that's fair. That's fair. That's you know, we have unfortunately seen where a couple of missions have gone bad for NASA back down through the years. That would be nerve wracking, you know, and. I suppose space flight, it's getting it's getting better to, you know, it's probably space flight is where air traffic was, you know, 100, 100 years ago. It's just getting going. You have lots of private companies now getting into the, you know, getting into the private space for, you know, space tourism, I think is what they're trying to create with it. So, you know, I think that's that's going to be another thing. Would I go though? Yeah, I'd love to. I think it'd be so fascinating to go out and look back down and say, God, every, you know, I look out, I look out a little window and say, gosh, everyone I know is outside that window. Yeah, it's cool, isn't it? Like imagine just, you know, you're there with the with the partner or whatever. And so where are we going on the date tonight? Honey, we're going to the moon. Absolutely. That's such a cool thing. But there you go. Who knows? So, yeah, let us know on that, too. Would you be interested in going to the moon? It's a you know, I wonder what accessibility or mobility would look like on the moon, because, you know, like obviously a cane and stuff like that. It's designed for the world we have with gravity. But we might have to rethink all of that someday. Who knows? Anyway, moving on. Thank you so much for that, Daniel. And hey, if you have thoughts on anything in the news today or anything that you spot along the way, we'd love to hear from you. You can send us a voice note on WhatsApp, 086199 0011. That's 086199 0011. Or you can send us an email to content at vi.ie. So whether it is about the moon or Mr. Dot's adventures running the Brighton Marathon. Look, you can talk about literally anything we'd love to hear from you. And on that note, that, people, is our podcast. Thank you so much for listening to Talking Technology Episode 109. Really hope you've enjoyed it. Do share with your friends if you do enjoy the show. It does help us grow and helps us get more people listening and talking about assistive technology. And that is only a good thing. So thank you so much for now for listening. We'll be back in two weeks time with another episode. But for now, this has been Talking Technology with VIA Labs. See you next time. Thanks for listening to the Talking Technology podcast with VIA Labs. If you'd like to support our show, please visit vi.ie slash donate. Talking Technology is proudly sponsored by IA Labs, the market leader in digital accessibility services. IA Labs, digital inclusion, your legal obligation. you