Magnification, maths and more, the latest updates to NVDA - Talking Technology episode 115

On this episode of Talking Technology, we catch up with Quentin Christensen from NV Access. 

We learn about upcoming features to the NVDA screen reader as well as how they keep the software secure.

We discuss a new variant of the Meta glasses in tech news and share details on why drone delivery won’t be taking off in Ireland anytime soon.

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

0:00 Intro

1:57 Voice Notes

17:48 NVDA chat with Quentin Christensen

42:18 - Talking Technology News

59:11 - 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. As you always do. Hello gang, welcome in to Talking Technology with VI Labs, episode 115. We finally survived the heat wave. We had a bit of a heat wave here in Ireland, as is much of Europe having a bit of a heat wave. They're sweltering away there, but we got through it. We are over the worst of it, I think, now in Ireland. But yes, it's been a very hot time with some uncomfortable nights, but we are flying through it. And look, what you can do now though, is you can relax, maybe get yourself some ice cream. That could be nice. And you can enjoy the technology podcast for the next hour or so. We've got a great show coming up for you today. We're going to be catching up with the guys from NV Access. They're of course the makers of NVDA, where they'll be telling us all about the new screen magnifier that they are introducing to NVDA, among other things. So lots to discuss over the next little bit, so do be sure to stick with us and subscribe as well for future episodes. You know, this episode is going to be fantastic, but you're going to want all of the episodes, so do be sure to subscribe for those as well. And maybe do get in touch with us. There are loads of ways that you can join the conversation. And here are just a few of them. So if you would like to chat, give us your thoughts, your opinions, your views on anything that we talk about on Talking Technology, we'd love to hear from you. You can send us a WhatsApp voice note. You may have noticed that WhatsApp voice notes are slowly but surely getting a higher audio quality now as well. So it's even better for us. It's brilliant. You can send a voice note to us on WhatsApp. The number that you need there, it's 086-199-0011, that's 086-199-0011. Or if you would like to get in touch with us by email, you can do that too. You can send us an email to content at vi.ie, that's content at vi.ie, there you go. So there are loads of ways that you can get in touch with us and we'd love to hear from you. We won't need to give you the number in future because WhatsApp, I don't know if you've seen it, but they're introducing tags, usernames, kind of similar to those that you'd see on the likes of Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and X and all of those. They're coming to WhatsApp now as well soon. So who knows, we'll be telling you to send your messages somewhere new perhaps. But anyway, loads of you are doing it the right way as it is and we have loads of voice notes in from you over the past week or so. So to catch up on that and more, I'm joined from Kilkenny by Mr. Joe Lonegan. Joe, how are you, sir? I'm good, David. I'm just getting over the shock of the heatwave. I'm still here anyway and I purchased a Princess fan, hot and cold fan. So obviously I was only using the cold part of it last week. So yeah, it's not accessible, by the way, just in case anyone's thinking of getting one. The app is fairly, it's a smart fan as well. The app is fairly poor, poor effort really. But we got there in the end and there's a manual remote control. So that's my new tech, David. And I did see another really good one that I'd recommend to people as well. There's a Shark Flex cooling fan and I probably should have went for that one. But maybe maybe that's my next purchase for the next heatwave that comes in 2028 or something. You know, we don't get too many of them. We sure don't. And what makes a fan a Princess fan, Joe? Well, like a brand or is it pink? That's the brand because they have other devices and they have an app called Princess Home. So they have many other devices to do with cooling and air conditioning and all that kind of stuff. And with 150 euros, that particular one. Wow. And the Shark one I looked at was 120. So but that didn't have heating on it. So I was kind of buying two for the price of one, if you know what I mean. Even thinking in the winter ahead, David, you know, not just not just not just now, it's not all about today, you know. And there is me thinking you were on the beach, Joe, with your bright pink fan there, but no, Princess, the brand of the fan. No, it's black, all black and as a tower, it's about three foot tall and very skinny and sleek. Yeah. But I suppose everybody's their own, but I wouldn't purchase it again because of the app. But at the same time, I can still use it, you know. Fair enough. There you go. Well, listen, we've loads of voice notes in Joe and we're starting off this week with views from John on select to speak on Android and how sometimes it simply will not speak. Hello, my name is John Reynolds and I use the select to speech feature on my Android phone. One downside to it is if you go into certain PDF files, it'll tell you very often that there's no text found at that location, even though there is a text to be seen on the screen. That's my biggest issue with it, but there are probably better ways of going about it that I'm just not familiar with. OK, just thought I'd pass that on. Cheers. Thanks so much, John. Daniel, actually, if I bring you in here as so select to speak, it's a good option on Android, but it does struggle with some things like Facebook posts and PDFs, as John mentioned there. Yeah, I know that that can be an issue. All right. Now, there is a small workaround that John might be interested in. So if he goes back to his select to speak settings and in there, we've got our text to speech settings, we got our change reading voice, we got reading background. And then there's another interesting option here, which he might turn it on and test this for us. It's called Read Text on Images Beta. Tap on text within photographs or the camera viewfinder to hear that text read aloud. So if you actually switch that on. Now, I did test it myself on a troublesome PDF and voila, it read it back. So I'm thinking if we turn on this, that most of John's problems will be solved. OK, that's really interesting. Yeah, and as always, if he needs any help or assistance or support, just give us a call on our technology helpline. It's 1-800-911-110 and we'll be glad to help him get to the correct parts where he can turn that setting on. Absolutely. There you go. It's an interesting one. I've always for things like PDFs looked at options like seeing AI and traditionally would have been in vision was really good on Android as well. You know, that you could actually launch a you could open the actual document in seeing AI and it would scan it. Now, it does have a kind of page limit before it starts to lose formatting and so on and so forth. Yeah. But there are options there, but that one that you suggested, Daniel, sounds like a brilliant one. I like to select speed because depending on the way you can set it up, a lot of people will set it up that it's accessed by a button in the very bottom right. So traditionally on your Android, you'd have your your back button, your home button and your app overview button. And it puts in a fourth button on the on the bottom navigation bar, which is basically a little stickman. And you can set that to be your you can set that to be your select to speak short. So it's always there. And likewise, David, you say, you know, you've gone through a large PDF or something like that. You're on page 150 out of 190 or something like that, where other apps would struggle because the process, the whole PDF, at least with the select speak, you can just bring it in on that page and use it there. And also, if anybody is using your swipe up gesture for to return to home screen, some people have turned off the navigation bar and using using the swipe up, if you swipe up with two fingers, you should be able to set that that that will also launch select speak. So there's little ways around having select to speak. It's a great little tool to have on your Android phone. If, you know, if you want to be able to kind of bring in this, you don't want the full talk back or vice over experience. You just want to be able to bring in, you know, read this portion of the screen or just I would just want to read now. I don't want to continuously, you know, select speak is a fantastic tool for that. And very powerful. And I think once you switch on that, you know, read text on images, it could probably solve issues in other apps that are not being read aloud. You know, as John said in his voice note there, you know, no text found at that location. You can find that that solves that that solves that issue in a lot, not all situations, but a lot. There you go. Good to know. Hopefully that answers your question, John. Hopefully it's a feature that might be of use. So do be sure to let us know how you get on. And thank you so much for getting in touch. Our next voice note, ladies and gentlemen, he is back. It's been a while, but we got a message in from Edvard to tell us all about a new piece of software that he's been using called Omnidescriber. Here is what Edvard had to say. Just to share about an amazing tool I've discovered a couple of months ago from another podcast, actually, it's called Omnidescriber. And what that does, it's an audio description app. You can paste a YouTube video URL into it and it will basically audio describe a YouTube video to you using your NVIDIA or whatever screen synthesizer you're using. Using its voice to describe the video about time, because I was thinking like, when will we ever get the audio description for YouTube? Check it out, guys. It's called Omnidescriber. And then once you download it, it's very easy to download it. Once you download it, you have to paste the Gemini API key for the audio description to work. And then you're all set. I actually used Google Gemini to guide me how to basically do every step. So check it out, guys. It's amazing. There you go. Thank you so much, so much, Edvard, and for sharing the tip. Even though I must, I can't lie, Edvard, I'm a little disgusted that you're learning tips on other podcasts, although you know what? You're dead right to. There's loads of options out there. So you might as well and share the love, share the knowledge. A great little tip there, Joe, Omnidescriber. It's one that had you come across it before. I haven't ever come across it before. I know CNAI had a thing where I suppose they call it a channel that they were able to describe little videos. And it worked to a degree. It was OK. It didn't develop much further after that. But this Omnidescriber, I wouldn't mind giving it a try. And, you know what, Edvard, if you have any more details, send them on. Or you can even write us a little review. Sometimes we love to get little reviews from service users on products that not many people have already. For example, Brendan Laughin sent us in one there a while ago about, I think, that monitors his oil tank and how much oil he has left in it. And it saves him money and helps him not run out of oil when he needs it the most and stuff like that. So, no, but Omnidescriber app. Yeah, I think that's a great idea, especially seen as many YouTube videos do not have audio description. And it doesn't seem to be on people's agenda even of putting them in. So, yeah, no, that's great to hear. Absolutely. It's a shame that you need the Gemini key and that it doesn't just work out of the box. Yeah, I suppose it's probably a security thing. Maybe, you know, I reckon it could be something to do with security that way, like just to make sure the software works with each other and that kind of thing. But it is awkward for the regular user to be putting in API keys, you know, that'd be like double touch for some people. So it's a pity. Yeah, it's just not an app you can just download and use. Well, hopefully we'll start to see things like that change in the future. And maybe that's an area where, you know, it's an opportunity for and I know we'll be chatting to the folks from NV Access and MVDA later on. But maybe that's an area where the more commercial screen readers can truly differentiate themselves, like JAWS and stuff like that, by just integrating some of these tools that do use that kind of slightly more expensive AI to actually provide really cool descriptions and stuff like that. Perhaps that's a differentiator. Time will tell. Edvard, thank you so much for the voice note. Much appreciated. And thank you for sharing a really valuable tip. That is awesome. Our final voice note this week is from Amy. And Amy was responding to a question that we had in the newsletter recently enough about how people are using AI in their day to day lives. Hi there. At the moment, I use AI as generally a web browser. If I need to follow up on a thing rather than going into Safari, I tend to just open ChatGPT. And there you go. Opening ChatGPT as opposed to using the more traditional web browser. I must say, I do much the same thing now. It's 50-50 for me as to whether I'll open Safari and ChatGPT. But when we were discussing this this morning, Joe, you rightly pointed out that OpenAI, who make ChatGPT, obviously, they've recognised this because they've launched their own browser. We talked about it on the newsletter and stuff before. Yeah, they've launched their own browser a couple of months ago called OpenAI Atlas Web Browser. But at the moment, it's only available on Mac. Some people say that's great. All the Mac fans are saying, who cares? I'll say nothing. I'm a happy camper, though. Yeah, of course. But look, I think it will come to Windows machines and iPhones and all that crap. But I agree with Amy there. I often end up asking ChatGPT something with Siri and then it comes back with enough information that I don't really have to go launching websites. And sometimes I say, this is a long answer from ChatGPT. And I say, yeah, that's great. It's long enough. I'll just copy the text and do what I want with it, basically. So I find I end up not having to go to Safari as often as I used to have, if you know what I mean. And that means less flicks, less clicks, less time on the screen and getting your answers quicker. But always keep in mind that ChatGPT is not telling you lies, but it can get information from sources. So double check your sources where the information is taken from and don't always take it as gospel. Absolutely. I think that's good advice. Amy, thank you so much for the voice note and thank you to everyone who sent voice notes this week. If you want to join the conversation, 086-199-0011 is the number that you need. 086-199-0011 is that number there. And yeah, between OpenAI and browsers and really cool tools like Select2Speak and the OmniDescriber there. So there's some great tips in there and that's the kind of thing we love to get in. So do continue to share your thoughts, your views and your tips. We'd love to hear from you. But now, though, it's time to move on to catch up with the guys from Envy Access. Now, Envy Access, they're based in Australia and they are the non-profit behind the NVDA screen reader, which, of course, has surged in popularity in recent years and is, of course, a free alternative to some of the commercial screen readers, namely JAWS. So I caught up with Quentin Christensen from Envy Access to learn a little bit about what's new in NVDA, what's coming and what the future looks like for NVDA. Joining me now on Talking Technology, I am really excited to be joined by Quentin from Envy Access. Quentin, how are you? Hi David and hi everybody. I am fantastic and thank you for having me. Excellent stuff. So Quentin, Envy Access, obviously the company that make the NVDA screen reader, which is celebrating 20 years this year. It's been a bit of a journey and you've done a lot in that time. We have done a lot and it's been a fantastic journey and we are continuing onward and upwards. I can recap a little bit of the history for you. Actually, before Envy Access, Mick Curran was a young programmer who was looking at what he could do and in terms of creating a screen reader, he was aware of the commercial options available at the time and also strongly aware that the cost of those was recubative and out of reach for many blind people around the world. And so he wanted to see what he could do about that and even whether it was possible to make an open source screen reader. So Mick and Jamie Tay got together and started working on it and that was in 2006, early 2006. And by 2007, they started putting out releases of it to the wider world and they formed Envy Access in 2007. So actually, NVDA is 20 years old this year and we're going to continue the celebration next year when Envy Access itself turns 20. Yeah, so throughout that time, NVDA has grown and become more widely used and more stable, more feature rich. It's something that wherever, as pretty much any software developer in any field will tell you, there's always more to be done. We're going to cover it later, but we've got lots of developments in 2026 and things beyond that and through the latest versions of Windows and Office and everything else. All those different wonderful things. And yeah, like for a company with five team members, you certainly punch above your weight. So it's an interesting one. So let's, I suppose, dive into NVDA then. Let's start by looking at some of the recent updates for NVDA. So you mentioned kind of obviously keeping up with all of the latest stuff from the different operating systems and so on. But there's been a few things in new features as well, and you have recently released a kind of a roadmap of future developments, including for the first time a magnifier. So do you want to talk to me a little bit about what's new in NVDA now and maybe what's coming in the next couple of months and even potentially years? Absolutely. All right. Let me let me take a breath and dive in. In 2025, we brought in NVDA remote into NVDA. So it lets you control another computer that's running in NVDA. That had been a popular add on for quite a number of years. And so it was it was exciting to bring that into NVDA itself with the help of the original developers. That's always good. We made more improved. So a couple of years ago, 2023, I think it was, we brought in the add on store into NVDA itself so you can download add ons. And so last year, we improved that further with automatic add on updates and the ability to sort the add on list. We added support for math and PDF files, we added support for Windows 11 voice access. So this is one I've been asked a couple of times about recently. So voice access where NVDA itself reads out what's on the computer to you. Windows voice access is basically dictation. It lets you talk to the computer and give it commands, dictate documents, things like that. So that's the latest iteration of that. We have worked with various versions of of that through since at least early Windows 10. And we also added support for a few new devices, the NLS, eReader, ZoomMats, braille display and a few others. We improved support for the dot pad, for the Monarch, for various other exciting things coming to NVDA 2026.1. So the current version, which is available now, has been out for a month or so. So some of the important things for that now, we talked about updating to the latest versions of Windows. And one thing that we have had to do for quite some time that we've finally done is move NVDA to 64 bit from 32 bit. So in general, most users won't notice anything different in that regard. It will just work as it ever has, because most computers have been 64 bit for a while. But it has meant that we've had to drop a couple of things like Windows 8.1 support and Windows 10 on ARM. Most of those should hopefully be able to update to Windows 11 anyway. We've brought in another another add on. So MathCat has been a popular add on for quite a while for reading math. And that's now built into NVDA. And again, we worked with the developer of that, Neil, who did a lot of work for us in ensuring that was that was available for NVDA. And I've been quite excited about that, because I know how important math is in education, especially and. Definitely, definitely. And it was it was actually at a conference, the CSUN conference a number of years ago that we we saw a presentation by the University of Illinois, one of the American universities. Anyway, a couple of their professors had gone through all of the various options for working with math and a screen reader, any screen reader on different platforms and worked out the best combination that gave you the most accurate results was NVDA and MathCat. So that was very exciting. And I've been keen to get MathCat into NVDA since then. One of the questions I did want to ask, and I don't know, is this a big difference between, say, you know, NVDA and the likes of JAWS right now, is how is NVDA working with AI? Like, do you have, say, native integrations with some of the AI providers or how do things work? Is that largely an add on thing at the moment? Good question. And yes, at the moment, it is largely an add on thing. I went back and we've actually had add ons that will that will give you, say, image description through, you know, chat GPT or Gemini or various other providers. We've had add ons that will do that since at least early 2019. So so quite early in the in the piece. And we still have add ons that will will do that. We actually were involved with a project last year to bring in a version of that for for NVDA. And what we specified was if we're going to do something like that, it has to be local and on device because we know that privacy is and security is crucial and very important to a lot of our users. I think that the two main questions we get asked about AI is, does NVDA have AI things that can do magic with AI? And the other one is, particularly from employers, it doesn't have any AI stuff in it, does it? So, yeah, we want to make sure if we do bring in something like that, that it would be something that would work for both of those groups. And what we found was we did get a local model, which we got able to give descriptions. But what we found was it ended up very large and cumbersome. And most importantly, it wasn't accurate. It would it would give you gibberish half the time. So we weren't happy with that. It's something that we are still exploring. But, yeah, it's not something that we've got available in a public version at this point. But there are, I think, half a dozen add-ons that I last time I looked that will do image description and various other things with a lot of the popular AI models. So, yeah, that's where we're at. So talk to me a little bit then about this new magnifier and some of those new features that are coming in future versions of NVDA. Because this is the first time that you've been competing, friendly competing, shall we say, with JAWS for a long time, but this time you're looking at something like Fusion, it sounds like. Indeed, indeed. And I should start by saying we didn't do this looking at Fusion going, yes, we want to we want to do that. We want to beat that. We looked at this because we got a lot of feedback, particularly from organizations such as yourself and who work with end users regularly. And what we found was that, as you'll know, a lot of users don't start out being blind. A lot of users start out sighted with a level of sight, whether it's full sight or all partial. And it may change and deteriorate. And so they'll go from using magnification to then using magnification with a little bit of speech, to then relying more on that, to then becoming screen reader, entire screen reader users. So what felt was that incorporating magnification into NVDA would allow those users to start getting used to using a magnifier and using a screen reader together and some of the keystrokes of NVDA as they progress. So that's where we we've started looking at that. The new magnifier in NVDA, so it's available now in NVDA 2026.2 beta. We just put out beta 4 recently, beta 5 should be out around probably by the time this is on air. And the final NVDA 2026.2 is probably looking at around early August to come out. So that is basically similar to the Windows magnifier in terms of the features. At this stage, it's got things like color filtering and even touch, pinch, zoom gestures and things like that. One thing which is a limitation of it currently is it only supports full screen mode. So we are planning to bring in docked modes and other modes in future, but since its first release, it's just full screen. We have been asked around, but I don't need the magnifier, how's that going to affect me? I don't want to just slow things down and we're quite conscious of that. So like many NVDA features, if you don't use it, it won't be active and it won't be in the way, it won't slow things down. And even I had a look recently at the size of my copy of NVDA 2026.1.1 and my beta of 2026.2 and they were one megabyte difference. So even on the size that it takes up on your hard drive is minimal. So if you don't need it, don't worry, it's not going to get in the way. If you do use it, then you can have it set so that it will start as soon as NVDA starts with your chosen settings or you can enable it and disable it as you choose. Will it work on those secure screens like at login and stuff? Yes, yes, it will. It will. So like most NVDA features, yeah, you can use it everywhere. I was going to say only in a install. So if you're trying the beta version, probably one thing to be aware of is. We normally recommend using a beta version as a, say, portable copy of NVDA rather than install, just in case. And those portable copies won't work on secure screens, but that's because they're portable copies, not anything with the magnifier. Sure. Something you've mentioned a few times actually was kind of it being secure and you mentioned privacy earlier around the AI stuff. One of the comments that we get the odd time when talking about NVDA is that, you know, my employer is not going to allow NVDA because it's open source. And, you know, my employer doesn't think open source is secure, all of that kind of thing. So for those who aren't aware, what does it mean that NVDA is open source? And what are those concerns and how can people alleviate some of those concerns? Absolutely. So I could perhaps have touched on this when I was talking about the development of NVDA as it came along. And that is one of the big reasons for the success of NVDA with, as we talked about, a very small team. We get around half of our contributions are from the community. We couldn't do it all ourselves. So what open source is, is basically just that the source code for NVDA, how it's made, is available publicly. You can get the source code through NVDA and you can build it yourself if you know what you're doing. That also means that you can inspect that source code. You can make sure that we're doing what we say we're doing. We're not, you know, collecting lots of data that we're not telling you about or anything like that. And if you find any bugs, you can let us know or you can fix them. So open source also means we will accept code contributions from the community, from individuals or organizations around the world. And certainly we are a charity. So NVDA access in Australia is a charity and we'll accept donations. But one of the monetary donations, but one of the other ways that both people and organizations help us is through those code contributions, giving us some developer time to fix various things. It also means that if a particular organization is very keen on a particular feature that they use and is very important to them, they can develop for that, they can contribute code towards that and submit that. So that then brings us to security. Obviously, with people all around the world submitting code to NVDA, we want to make sure that's secure and you want to make sure that that's secure when you download it as well. So any code that is submitted to NVDA is vetted and checked by at least two of our staff members who go through it and make sure that it not only is secure and does what it should do, but yet that it doesn't cause any other problems or anything like that. So it is all vetted and checked and we recommend downloading NVDA from nvaccess.org, our website. And you know that anything you download from us has been compiled by us and made by us, just as if you were downloading another program. You would want to download that from the official developer of that software. In terms of open source take up in the industry and the community, what we've actually found is more that many companies and countries are actually mandating the use of open source. They've realized that actually it's a lot cheaper overall to use open source software, not only because, yes, it's usually free, but even when you contribute back to that open source, it's still cheaper than needing to pay somebody else for it. So I think it was Germany recently have announced that code they produce has to be open source, unless there's a good reason for it and contributed back into the community. Even the US, Australia, the UK all do that and a lot of the big companies. So Microsoft, parts of Windows have been open sourced and anyone can contribute to those or at least download them, compile them, look at the source code yourself. And yet most of the other big tech companies are also on board with that as well. So what we actually have found and one thing we went to the SiteCity conference in Frankfurt recently, and one thing we found there was perhaps a better explanation, not so much my employer won't use this because it's open source, but I need to make sure that we've got support for this, that it's not just so open source projects can be or open source software can be anything from here's something I made on the weekend, it's out there, do what you will with it, to something made by a company like Microsoft. And so if you're an organization looking to use software, you want to make sure that it's supported. If I use this and things go wrong, is there someone I can contact? And so as well as yes, I'm available to answer your emails. We do actually have telephone support that you can purchase from anywhere in the world. And we also have a number of companies that do provide local on the ground support. That's probably the biggest thing and definitely that support is something that we are keen to ensure that is able to be provided either by us or by third parties. And Quentin, I suppose then to wrap up from there then, what's next in general for NVDA? And how can people find out more and get NVDA if they want to contribute or just use the software? How can you find out more? So we have a blog that we put out every fortnight on our website, nvaccess.org. And you can also sign up to get that via email. You can you can sign up for that. You can sign up just to find out when we put out a new release of NVDA if you want. And you can sign up for a couple of other things as well. So on our website, there's a newsletter link and that will let you sign up for one or all of those things and more. We also have since we've talked a bit about corporate use today, we've also got a link there for corporate users, which which answers a lot of the questions around open source, around security, around data collection and things like that. So we are quite happy to work with organizations and perhaps to answer that last question around organizations and wanting to deploy NVDA. They are more than welcome to reach out to us with any questions that aren't answered there. You know, sometimes we'll get questions for our license agreement, our privacy policy, all of those sorts of things, which you can find there. And if you don't find them there, you can reach out and I'm more than happy to give them to you. We are active on social media, so we're NV Access on most platforms. On Mastodon is probably one of our more popular platforms. We are at NV Access at postodon.org, which probably is easiest to get to from our website. Super. Excellent stuff. Quentin, for now, thank you so much. Great catching up. And we should do this again sometime. And thank you as well. I know it's awkward sometimes doing Australia and Ireland coming together, but we made it work. We did. Thank you so much for for working out of time with me and and for having me on. And I would love to come back whenever you would like to have me. Thank you. Always great to catch up with the guys from NV Access there to learn all about what's new in NVDA and all of there. I guess it's all still going to be part of the same product. There's Scream magnifier and stuff there, but some interesting stuff and probably good innovation as well. So great to see that and see where these things are going. If you have thoughts on any of that, we'd love to hear from you. You can send us a message on WhatsApp to 086-199-0011. That's 086-199-0011. Or you can send us an email to content at vi.ie. We get lots of comments in around NVDA and JAWS and so on when we do cover them. So we'd love to hear your opinions. You can find us on WhatsApp or by sending us a good old fashioned email. But other than that, though, it's time to move on because it is now time for Talking Technology News with the one, the only, the wonderful Mr. Daniel Dunn. This is Talking Technology News. So with your latest Talking Technology News, I'm Daniel Dunn. Meta have announced a new cheaper version of the Meta glasses without the Ray-Ban partnership in place of a custom design. These new versions also include the action button previously seen on Meta optics and come in around 100 euros cheaper. Interestingly, Meta is still working with the Ray-Ban parent company, Esciller Luxottica, on these new glasses. However, they won't contain any additional branding and will be simply known as Meta glasses. The news comes after the recent launch of Meta optics for those who want prescription lenses in their glasses, with the announcement coming ahead of more details being announced for a Meta glasses competitor by Google and Samsung, which will be powered by Gemini. Meta seem to be finally realizing the power these glasses have for blind people after announcing that blind veterans in the USA will be entitled to free glasses. It's unclear if we could see anything similar to this in Ireland in the future, but we can hope. Either way, these new, more affordable glasses will be likely a step forward for some who wanted to dip their toes in the smart glasses pond. So what version of the Meta glasses do you have and why? Please do let us know with a WhatsApp Vice Note now. Drone delivery company MANA have paused deliveries in Ireland, saying the lack of a clear national framework has left the sector reliant on local planning processes and created uncertainty around the infrastructure required to support drone delivery at scale. They also say that they are now going to focus their attention on the USA and UK markets, where they see more opportunities to grow. MANA offered an app similar to the likes of Just Eat or Deliveroo, but instead of a human driver delivering your food or items, they were instead delivered to your garden by a drone. While drone delivery may be more efficient than human delivery, lots of concerns were raised around the noise of the drones, as well as the concern that drones will be able to see into other people's gardens. As of now, when you open the MANA app in Ireland, you get a message saying, we'll be back. MANA was in many ways cutting edge and it was particularly interesting to see an Irish company effectively competing with much larger players like Amazon. Some believe that drone delivery could provide significant benefits for medication delivery and delivery of blood, for example. But all of those plans now seem to be on hold in Ireland at least. Would you use a drone delivery service? And do you think it should be allowed in Ireland? Please do let us know your thoughts now. And now for a look at some of our upcoming webinars and events. On the 2nd of July, we have Siri and Google Assistant commands. On the 7th of July, we have scams and frauds awareness. On the 9th of July, we have online shopping tips and tricks. On the 14th of July, we have electronic Braille devices. On the 16th of July, we've got Zoom training. And on the 21st of July, we've got online banking overview. If you are interested in finding out more about these events, please do visit our website, vi.ie, under news and events and upcoming events for more details. If you'd like to participate in any of these webinars or courses, please do send an email to training at vi.ie. That's training at vi.ie. And finally, for now, shopping from the likes of Sheen and Temu is about to get a little bit more expensive. From the 1st of July, packages being imported into the EU under the value of 150 euro will have a 3 euro customs charge placed on them for each unique item in the package. This has led to the Consumer Protection Commission, the CCPC, warning people to be aware of scammers trying to impersonate revenue to try collect non-existent custom charges. If you have a charge that you are unsure about, it is extremely important to double check where it is coming from, as while it may be legitimate, it could also be a scam. The increase to the cost of importing from lots of fast fashion retailers has some believing that the charity shop may be about to benefit. For our part in Vision Ireland, our retail division has been exploring the use of platforms like Vinted and Vestiaire for selling fashion items online, with money raised going back into supporting Vision Ireland services. Time will tell if these new custom charges impact people's buying habits, but for now, just be careful when shopping online. And that's it for this week. If you have a story that you think we should cover, or a guest that you'd like to see in the show, please do let us know with a WhatsApp vice note. For now though, it's back to you David. Thank you very much, Daniel. Yes, I had not heard actually of Vestiaire until only recently, but apparently it's like, I don't know how to put it, but it's like a more vintage focused version of Vinted. They're very much a kind of a high end like Vinted equivalent, which is really cool. So yeah, there you go. You learn something new every day, don't you? Every day is a school day. Every day is absolutely a school day. And good to point out as well, that if you are interested, and you do want to just be careful around online frauds, scams, all of that sort of stuff, we do have that course coming up next Tuesday. That's the 7th of July at midday. So do be sure if you're interested, you can sign up for that and all of our courses by sending an email to training at vi.ie. So Daniel, that new charge there that's coming for some of these packages from the likes of Sheen and Tmoo that are coming anywhere from abroad, this is a new thing, but it's going to add costs for people. It is. Look, this is brought in by the EU. So it's effectively a tariff on goods coming in from outside of the EU and with particular focus on low cost items. So like we all use our Amazon, our Tmoo, all these different websites to take advantage of, you know, low cost projects from other parts of the world. So the EU is clamping down on this. They've introduced a three euros charge. Now, here is the kicker, right? So it's it's important to note this is not three euros for every item. It's three euros for a category of items. So let's say I go on to onto a website and I order a shirt and a pair of shoes. Right. And let's say a belt. There's three items. So, you know, they're all clothing items. So the chances are they'll attract a charge of maybe three euro because they're all clothing items. Now, if I was to go along and order, you know, a blow up thing for a pool, you know, and that's a toy. So that's in a different category. So if I was to put that on the order, now we could be up to six or nine euros. So it's not per item. It's across the categories of item that you're ordering or electronics item, a cheap, cheap USB charger. Now, if I order 10 USB chargers, it's still three euro. But if I order one, it's also three euro. So that's that's that's the thing to remember. So it's it's the products in the category. And it's worth noting as well, I suppose, that some of these companies, I guess, certainly the bigger ones, the likes of your Tmoos and your Sheens and your Amazons, they are expected to automatically add that three euro customs charge at the point at which you're checking out. So that is something that will be good, I guess. I think what it will make people do is, well, if I'm going to order, you know, I'm going to order more and try and justify the three euro charge, you know, more but less often, perhaps. Yeah. More bulk ordering, I think. And, you know, you're going to probably have stuff sitting in your basket for a couple of weeks. And then when it comes to a certain moment, say, yeah, I think this justifies ordering it and will order. It's interesting. There was that piece in in the journal, I believe it was over the weekend or in recent days, at least, about different charity shops, obviously Vision Ireland. Full disclosure is one of the biggest charity shops, if not the biggest, I think, in Ireland. There are others as well, of course, Oxfam, one of the big ones, too. But they were all kind of speaking that about how there is a resurgence of, you know, more sustainable shopping and people deciding to purchase second hand, maybe because they want to be more sustainable, but also because there's that perception that, I guess, well, with the cost of living crisis and so on, it's a more affordable option now, I guess, for people. Absolutely. Yeah, look, we all want to be as well as environmentally friendly as possible. So, you know, instead of just chucking something in the bin that could be perfectly working, you know, getting that item into a second home is a great thing to be able to do. You know, cutting down on waste keeping stuff over our landfills. You know, and yeah, if we can do it locally and benefit our own community, absolutely, why not? I think it's a very good thing to do. It's not huge effort on anyone's behalf at the end of the day, you know, to consider, should I, is this item good enough for somebody else to take on? You know, maybe your circle of friends or family don't want that item that you've finished with. You know, the charity shops are always interested in good stuff that somebody else might be interested in. Absolutely. There you go. And you can find out details about all of our charity shops if that's so interests you on the Vision Ireland website. Joe, there is other stories there as well. New meta glasses, new cheaper meta glasses, more to the point. Yeah, this is a brilliant story because these cheaper meta glasses have the action button and they're made by the same, I suppose, the same makers that make the Ray-Ban glasses. There might be a cheaper plastic, but apparently by all accounts they fit really well because they've got a more flexible hinge in the arms and they also suit some prescription lenses a little bit better because they're more flexible and they have a couple of nose pads to make them fit better. So that's all positive stuff. And a lot of people say the cameras are as good, if not better than a lot of second generation versions. So we said 309 euros is the regular price that I've seen them at, or the average price I've seen them at. So that's actually very good. And it really means meta are trying to steal a march in that market, you know, and get as many people as they can. They also have the action button, which I think is amazing, especially for people that don't want to keep saying hey meta going around. It can be a bit weird for people to keep doing that. So rather than keep doing that, you can tap a little button and you can set that button up to say something like hey meta, take a look and give me a detailed response of what you can see. Or you could say hey meta, take a look and read any text you can see. So there's lots of different things you can do and you can, I suppose, make it to suit yourself. Which is always what you want, ultimately, you know. Daniel, were you going to come in there as well? Yeah, I think it's a very interesting timing, as Joe said, you know, very interesting development, but a very interesting timing. And it's kind of eluded into the article there, you know, with the expected launch of Google and Samsung and Apple. Smart classes were inching closer to that time of year where these big guys were going to come out with their announcements, you know, to get ahead of the Christmas market, should I say that word, in the middle of June? I'll allow it, I'll allow it. Yeah, so it's interesting that meta is looking at this as this is their warning shot to the guys, you know, coming into this market now. The big guys are ready to play a ball. This is their warning shot. We're going to keep the prices honest. And, you know, as Joe said, with the action button, I think that's a fantastic, you know, a fantastic thing that will, because people are conscious, I won't say everybody, but a lot of people are conscious out there and say, I don't really feel like going down the street and shouting, hey, take a look, you know. So to have the action button, I think that is really sweet. So meta are hitting in with two big things there, you know, we got our price down, we got our action button, you know, let's throw it back, because they probably know that Google and Apple are probably at the final design stages of their glasses. So who knows what they're going to bring. It's going to be interesting. And this competition, it can only be good because it leads to better prices for consumers. And hopefully, as time goes on, it will lead to better products for consumers too. Better innovation, absolutely. Absolutely. There you go. So exciting times ahead on that for sure. So yeah, absolutely. A very exciting one. The final story then to touch on this week is one that we didn't cover in detail in tech news. But Waymo, self-driving company Waymo, they have announced that they have registered an entity in Germany because they are planning a European expansion. Who knows what that will look like or whether it will come to Ireland. We can't get the, we can't seem to have the drones in the air, but maybe we'll have the self-driving cars on our streets, Joe. Are you a fan? I am a fan, of course. And the dream is to have a self-driving car. God knows what it will cost. We'll have to put pressure on for a grant sometime, David. Who knows? But I think the Waymo is, it sounds very interesting. And I've seen a couple of videos, even from the American version on YouTube, and I've seen some blind people using them over there. And I'd love to try one, you know, and in Germany, I suppose they do manufacture cars and they do really good job on manufacturing as regards planning and stuff like that. So I'd imagine their roads are a little bit ahead of ours. We won't go mad and criticize our lovely rural roads too much. And hopefully these Waymo's have cow detection if they come to my neck of the woods anyway, because you wouldn't know what's crossing the road down here sometimes. But I think, look, we're a bit away from it over here, but I do love hearing about the innovations and one day I think we'll get there. Absolutely. I do want to, when they launch in London, that's going to be close enough to home that I'll probably be able to try one. And I do really look forward to that, because I think it's going to be like the potential for how that could enable someone who's blind or visually impaired to literally go anywhere they want to. The potential is incredible. Oh yeah. I think you could do a report on that. Maybe a live report from London, David. That's something to really look forward to. Absolutely. So who knows? Exciting times ahead. But hey, if you have thoughts on any of the stories we covered, we'd love to hear from you. You can send us a WhatsApp voice note if you would like the number that you need there. It's 086-199-0011 or you can send us an email to content at vi.ie. And again, if you would like to sign up for any of those courses that we do, we've got the scams and frauds one coming up next week. Even this week we've got the one for Siri and Google Assistant commands. We've got loads of different online talks and webinars that you can attend. All you've got to do is send an email to training at vi.ie and just express your interest and one of our training team will be in touch. It is as straightforward as that. But other than that, that is our show. Thank you so much for listening over the last hour or so. We hope you've enjoyed it and we will be back in two weeks time for another episode of this chaos. So be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and we'll see you then for another episode of Talkin' Technology with ViLabs. See you soon. For more information on 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