Brian Hartgen discusses Leasey 11.5, and Mayo are all Ireland champions - Talking Technology episode 117

After 75 years of heartbreak, 11 final defeats, and a curse from a Catholic priest, Mayo finally won the All Ireland. After a weekend that will go down in Irish sporting history for generations to come, Sara tells us what that incredible moment was like with audio description in the stadium.

Brian Hartgen from Hartgen Consultancy tells us what’s new in the latest release of their Leasey product, demoing the new Leasey Media Centre and integrations with ChatGPT.

We hear about a sitcom from The RNIB, and find out how AI is overcharging people for Guinness.

All that and more on this week’s Talking Technology.

The WebAIM screen reader survey

Vision Ireland survey on shopping apps

Leasey from Hartgen Consultancy

0:00 - intro

0:40 - Mayo are all Ireland champions after 75 years of heartbreak

10:56 - voice notes, and a sitcom about blindness from the RNIB

24:20 - What is Leasey? A chat with Brian Hartgen from Hartgen Consultancy.

52:49 - Talking Technology News

1:04:29 - 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. May God protect all those who serve the cause of peace, and oh, one more thing, Mayo for Sam! Well, there you go. They finally did it. After 75 years, I do love, I must say, that some listening internationally will not have a clue what we are talking about. But Mayo have finally won the Sam McGuire, the All Ireland final after 75 years, rumors of a curse, the whole lot. They did it. They have finally done it. And someone who was there, we've roped her into this. I know this is a technology podcast and I swear we will get to the technology bits in a minute. But Sarah McFadden from Vision Sports, how are you a Mayo woman? You did it. We did it. It's no longer Mayo for Sam, David. It's Mayo have Sam now. Mayo have Sam. Well, congratulations. You were in the stadium. I was. I was. I'm still recovering two days later, but I was there. It was my first ever time to get to go to an All Ireland final. We've had some amount of them since I've been around, but I have never got my paws on the elusive tickets. But I think it all fell into place this year and I managed to get my hands on them. Eleven times. You just missed out. Barely missed out. Eleven times since 1951. But you did it this time around and you did it with audio description. You were on the telly on Saturday night chatting about the audio descriptive commentary on RTE's Up For The Match. But what did you think of the commentary on the day? Unbelievable. Yeah, I was on Up For The Match on Saturday night, I suppose, talking about the excitement of it and the build up to it and how I suppose making an All Ireland final accessible is something that definitely wouldn't have been a thought 75 years ago. But I'm very glad that I was on Up For The Match last Saturday when I did have a voice. And God help anyone listening to this or my voice is still recovering. But it's it's definitely a good thing we're two days later, David, because you wouldn't have had any words coming out of my mouth on Sunday night. God, it was just amazing to to be able to experience it. When it comes to an All Ireland final, your tickets are gold dust, you can't just get them for anyone who maybe doesn't know that. But what that meant was I had to graciously accept a ticket on my own. So I was sitting on my own in the stadium, which I would have done anyway, very happily. But I definitely wouldn't have had the same experience in previous years as I got to have this year where I was fully engaged in it the whole time, because I didn't just have someone to turn around and ask what happened here, what happened there. And actually, at one point, it had gone to Hawkeye and nobody knew. And I knew because I could hear it in my ears. So I was telling everyone beside me what it was. That's so cool for a visually impaired person to know more than others around them, isn't it? It's such a cool thing. Oh, it's it's it's mad. Like, I don't know, was it a good or a bad thing at times? Right. My hands in between my legs looking down at the floor. And sadly, I still had to hear what was going on and I didn't want to know. I was nearly taking the headphones out of my ears, but yeah, oh, God, it's it's just it was unbelievable to just be fully engaged at the whole time, like, know exactly what was happening, who had the ball. Like, these are things that I suppose you often and David, you're probably in the same situation as well if you're anyway into sport. But like you sometimes sit there and you're like, oh, is it worth going to the match this weekend? Because I'll just see more if I watch it on TV and I'll follow it more. And like, I love the atmosphere, like I love like anybody knows me. I love being from Mayo, but God, I love Mayo football and I always have. Like my grandfather bought me the first matching kit a long time ago and I wore it till it was definitely way too small for me. But it's just it's it's amazing to to be able to, I suppose, fully experience it. I'm not even going to say like everyone else, because it's just a bit better than everyone else. I fully know what's going on all the time. And when it comes to audio descriptive commentary, I suppose for anyone who I suppose a lot of the listeners on this would be familiar with it. But when it comes to the audio descriptive commentary in a sport and context, it is it's very like radio commentary, but with that additional bit of kind of info added around where they are, a little bit more on the location bits and where they are on the pitch and kind of that description. Say if they're taking a free year, that kind of information. Or then I'm I'm really kind of I would do the training as part of my role here in vision sports with the really great volunteers that roll these programs out all throughout the country in the different sports. But what part of that is, is it's it's great because I get to tell them I'm like it is worth describing what color their boots are and what if they've really tanned legs or if their hair is immaculately done in a mullet or little things like that. That many people who would have functional vision don't really notice that that adds to it. But it does. And it is something that people talk about. So like at one point, the lads were describing one of the free's and they're like, oh, and he's there with his bright pink boots and he's fixing his hair. And it gets a little bit like that that do add to the to the whole experience of it that maybe you don't quite get to have if you don't have that descriptive commentary available. Well, there you go. We do actually have. So this is the audio from the audio description in Crow Park. That's our national stadium there. Eighty, ninety thousand seats, a crazy operation. But this is the audio from the audio description in the stadium from the moment that Mayo won the San Miguel Cup. We're going to stay quiet now, because in less than 10 seconds, you will hear an amazing noise. Finally, finally, Mayo are champions. Seventy five years, eleven finals lost, countless hearts broken. But it's over. Mayo are the All-Ireland senior football champions. And there you have it. Did you cry, Sarah? Be honest. It's I'll be honest, David, in that it's actually really nice listening to this because I didn't hear a single word of that after it happened. I was watching back on we were on the way home on Sunday night. I ended up coming home, coming back to me. Oh, God forbid, God forbid I'd miss the homecoming. But I literally we were in Supermax, a ball in a lock, watching up for the match. And I was like, oh, my God, there was a hooter. I had no idea the hooter had gone. I was in hysterics, ugly crying, jumping up and down. The man behind me had lifted me up at one point. I was in his arms and I'm not a small person for anyone who knows. Like I'm five foot nine and and a bigger set person like and he was lifting me up. Oh, my God, it was I can't even describe it. It's probably the 20th time I've had to describe it. And I'm still not getting good at it because it was just you always, I suppose, like you dream of watching me at football. And we're 75 years in this drought cursor or curse me down. But like you always dream about what that moment would actually be like. And you're like, no, I'm going to soak it all in. I'm going to join. No, I hysterically ugly cried in the middle of the stand beside like the mayor was there. Oh, it's just oh, it was oh, I just I can't put it into words. Like my I knew someone also using the audio description there in the day. And they're like, oh, did you hear the shout out the lads gave you? And I was like, no, I couldn't hear anything. The crowd, I have never experienced a crowd like it from anything. And I'd attend a lot of live events from concerts to matches, to rugby matches, football matches. So Anthony and I've never witnessed anything like it in my whole life. And yes, I was one of the very strong contributors to it. But I ugly cried. I jumped up and down. I stood on the seat. I was standing up on the seat to try and get some kind of look because everyone was everywhere. And my seat was shaking. I was like, why is the seat shaking? I realized I was the one that was shaking. It wasn't the seat at all. It was just oh, it was honestly the best day of my life. Oh, that's pure magic. And the homecoming yesterday, 40,000 people in Mayo, Sarah. 40,000. It was 40,000 people just in McHale Park alone that they managed to get in the gates of a 20,000 or 25,000 capacity stadium that they were everywhere. They were literally behind the stage. Never mind, you know, in concerts and they close behind the stage. You can't see it. It didn't matter. They were all behind the stage. They were sitting there with no view at all of Anthon. It didn't matter. There was people everywhere. They also had the mall in Caspar, which is like a green area in the center of the town. They had a big screen there for the match the day before. Apparently, I heard after that that was also full. They played the homecoming on that as well for overflow. The town, I went, maybe I shouldn't admit now that I was out last night celebrating. But I was in town and they've pedestrianized at least all of Castlebar and Westport. No cars allowed to go down any of the main streets. And at 12 o'clock last night, when I decided I'd go home because I had work in the morning, I literally looked down the town, like down the main street, and I'd never seen the likes of it. There wasn't an inch. It was just people everywhere. It was like something you'd have seen in Slane Castle last weekend. Like there was just people everywhere, all over the streets. Like it was unbelievable to see. I've never seen the likes of it. But I suppose probably not unexpected, like us male people will celebrate things. But 75 years, it's definitely worth the celebration. First time in your life and first time for most people in Mayo. And long overdue, Sarah, congratulations, an amazing achievement for the team, but an amazing achievement for Mayo as well. And it will inspire so many young people to get into GAA as well. So I will let you know it's probably a real sore point coming back to work on this Tuesday. But there you go. You did it, Sarah. Congratulations. Mayo for Sam 2027. There you go. Right. That is not all we are going to talk about on the show today. We have loads to discuss. We're going to be catching up with Brian Harchin, creator of Leasy in a bit. But first, let's try our best to move on and let's give you some contact details, shall we? Now, if you do want to join the conversation, those all important contact details that you'll need, we can be reached on WhatsApp if you'd like. If you wanted to send us a voice note or a message over there, you can do so. You can send us a message to 086 199 00 11. That's 086 199 00 11. And we have finally reserved the username. We have got at talking technology on WhatsApp now as well. So if you do have access to that through some means, you can do it that way too. 086 199 00 11 on WhatsApp or at talking technology. Or you can send us an email if you'd like. You can send that to content at V.I.I.E. Content at V.I.I.E. If indeed you would like to do it the good old fashioned way. Nothing wrong with that at all. So to go through some of the correspondence that we've got in from the week gone by, I'm joined from Kilkenny by Mr. Joe Lonegan. Joe, how are you keeping? Are you well? I'm good, David. I am very happy to hear about Mayo's success after 75 years. The course is lifted. So the course is lifted there. Hopefully there's not any course put anywhere else and we're all going to have success this year. Yeah, they need to watch out for funerals. For those who don't know, who are listening internationally and wondering what the hell are they on about that course. Basically, the last time Mayo won an All-Ireland final was in 1951. And allegedly, the story goes that while the team were celebrating, they disrupted a funeral. And as such, a Catholic priest put a curse on the team on basically saying that none of, for as long as that team was still around, for as long as they were alive, Mayo would not win another football final in the All-Ireland. And as it so happens, the last member of the team passed away in 2023 from that 1951 team. And a few years later, 2026, 75 years on, Mayo become All-Ireland champion. So it's what a story when you think about it, Joe. It's true sporting lore. It's an amazing story. And they wore the same jerseys, all white. And some of them said maybe they should have changed the white years ago. Who knows? But look, they were absolutely brilliant. Mayo has gone mad. 60,000 people welcomed the team home. And I wish them all well and hope to have a great week celebrating. Absolutely. And I think it's the fact that they've lost 11 finals over, you know, since they won their last one in 1951 like that. That builds up an awful lot of pain and hurt. And like so many of those things were really close. Like just one point score. And, you know, it was the difference between winning and losing. So, you know, for all those years of pent up heartbreak to finally get over the line. So, yes, it's an absolute, you know, it's a story that's going to be told over and over and over for years to come. It's going to, you know, it's a new chapter in Irish history folklore, I guess, you know, our great grandchildren will be talking about, I guess. Absolutely. A crazy story. But lots of people very, very happy and the tears of Kerry of the kingdom long forgotten. They weren't getting much sympathy this time. I think the whole country was on Mayo's side. But there you go. Anyway, moving on, we do have lots to go through. We will, as I said in the intro, we didn't do a proper intro this week, but we are going to be catching up later on with Brian Harchin from Harchin Consultancy about their new Lisi 11.5 update. We'll be chatting about that in a bit. But first, some stuff to go through with yourself, Joe. We have had some really interesting stories over the last week, not least that the RNIB have been launching a sitcom. The RNIB is kind of a site loss organization over in the UK. Joe, we put up a post on the Vision Ireland social media and got some mixed responses to this. And I've heard mixed responses in person, too. Is site loss something that you can joke about? Is it we provocatively said, is it a laughing matter? And, you know, like there's been mixed responses to this one. Yeah, well, I think you have looked at those situations that are not funny, OK, like maybe accidents and stuff that happen. But generally you have to laugh at yourself because you can do some silly things when you're playing at the end of the day. And it's not look, it's totally OK because you've lost a sense or you have maybe only half of a sense when it comes to your site. So I've been known to talk to Maris and into Brown Thomas one time asking someone directions. But I was talking to myself in the mirror. I could see the silhouette of the person, but it wasn't a person. It was me I was talking to. So did you make a few directions, Joe? That's the question. Well, I was that person was doing the same arm movements as me. And I said, here's something going on here. You know, I said, yeah. So I realized fairly quickly, feel a bit silly. But you know what? You have to laugh at it when you tell other people it's very funny. And then another. Yeah, exactly. And then another time I was jumping on the dirt, I was really late. I could hear the dirt coming, coming up the escalator. Ran up just about made it before the door closed, went to walk on, but got a fright. So I decided to step back off again because I thought the door was going to squeeze me, of course. But my stick was still hanging out. So the dirt brought away my stick, where my stick found in the next station in Pier Street. So what could you do? You know, that's a really funny story because I had to get help. And with one of the people that worked in the station and they go down and collect my stick, which was safely there on the next platform. And the person helped me out, one of the staff there. He had a great laugh about it all together. So, yeah, you have to laugh at these things. There you go. Yeah, absolutely. This is a clip from the new You've Got Braille sitcom. This is from the RNIB. It's a short enough clip, but this one, we have Paddy, a great Irish name, by the way. And Paddy makes his escape to the bathroom and tries contacting his sister because his sister has brought him to have a chat with Stephen rather than his ex-partner, Eva. There's an accessible toilet here. Would you like me to come in with you? No, thank you, Stephen. What a kind and creepy offer. I'm good. All right. I'll be waiting right... Oh. 9.30pm. Oh, I'm running out of Eva time. Uh, no, there's someone blind using this toilet. You'll have to form a queue. Oh, my God. Message Max. Max, I said, Eva, not Stephen, you have to come and rescue me. This guy won't stop talking about pensions. I'm in the accessible toilet and I'm staying here until you come and get me, exclamation mark. Message to Max. Max, I said, Stephen, not Stephen. You have to come in chest and feet. This guy won't stop talking but shuns. Accessible boiling and you get me, exclamation mark. Everything OK in there? So great. Having such a great time in here. Max, I haven't got long left to talk to Eva. I really need to talk to Eva. I'm in Eva. No. No. If you run out of toilet roll, I can start asking around for some napkins. No. God, no. I have toilet roll. Paddy? Oh, no, no, no. Was that your phone? Yep. All good. Coming out now. Where is the flush? Oh, my God. Paddy, did you know you pulled the emergency alarm? Yes. Thank you, Stephen. I'm going to go to the house. Poor our Paddy is having a really bad time of it there in the accessible bathroom. I think lots of people have been there, Joe. We've all been there where our phone didn't play ball and started doing that whole dictation disaster thing. So, yeah, happened loads of times. And even occasionally I sent off a dictation that wasn't didn't say what I meant to say and stuff. So, yeah, we've all been there and we can we can feel his pain, David. 100 percent. We can feel his pain. I'd be really interested to know. Lots of people have lots of thoughts on this. If people do want to send in messages to us on their thoughts on that new sitcom from the RNIB, it's called You've Got Braille. It's available for free on podcast apps. There's only four episodes to it. It's actually produced by the same company behind Derry Girls, which is they've got a big company in there to do that, which is really interesting for a cyclops organization. But there you have it. Anyway, let's get on to some voice notes this week, Joe. We did have a voice note in from Edvard. Edvard, a regular contributor to the show, had a question on the Meta glasses and specifically using Meta AI when you're on a call. Hi, guys. There must be a way to turn on the Meta catchphrase for the glasses during an active phone call because somebody I know was definitely able to do it. So if you guys can please check it out for me, how to do it, that'll be great. Because I've been digging around settings. I've been doing researches and I'm just really getting nowhere. So please do check it out and once you find out, let me know. Thanks so much, Edvard. Really do appreciate that. Look, we did look into it. It doesn't seem to be possible to certainly access Meta AI when you're on a phone call. I don't know what exactly it was that your friend was doing. It is possible to use Meta commands to end calls and take actions within calls, but not to actually use Meta AI as far as we can tell. Now, we're happy if someone does want to correct us on this. By all means, do send us a message and let us know. But as far as we can tell, that's not possible to use Meta AI while you're on a call. Yeah, I don't think so, David. There's many variations of the glasses now. That's not to say maybe there is a version of Oakleys or something that it might work on or has occasionally worked on or something. Maybe it might have been a glitch. But as far as I know, it doesn't really work. And as you said, you can hang up and answer a call with Meta. But you can also, as far as I know, hang up with a touch on the side of your glasses as well. But sometimes it can start music and start a bit of a merry-go-round again. Yes, with the circle. But yeah, the Meta glasses, they do all sorts of wonderful things and have updates all of the time. And I know some people are complaining at the moment that the Snap AI that they're using is having a few issues at the moment where it's hallucinating a lot. So and it's not reading back posts as well as it used to be. So we'll give it a chance and hopefully it'll all iron itself out. So that was one other thing I noticed. There was another question as well that a colleague asked earlier, can you connect two pairs of Meta glasses to the one Meta AI app or to the one phone, we'll say. And the answer is you can actually connect two or three pairs of glasses. So I suppose the reason you might have two or three pairs is you might be a heavy user of them. And when one has gone dead, you can switch over and use the other one. Or maybe you might want one clear set and one dark set. So yeah, that's all I have on the glasses today, Edvard. I'm sorry, I couldn't help you more with that one. If I do come across something, I will I will announce it or even contact you personally myself if I do come across that set in your lookbook. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Edvard, for that as well. We really appreciate the message. If you have any thoughts on that subject or whether you have found a way to get Meta AI working on a call, we'd love to hear from you. Do send us a message on WhatsApp if you would, 086-199-0011. Maybe you can prove us wrong, we'd love to hear from you. But now, though, we have lots of other exciting topics to come on the show. We will be returning to the All Ireland final later, in fact, because AI did go rogue in Crowe Park and people ended up being overcharged for their alcohol thanks to facial recognition. What a world. We'll be chatting about that later on in the show. But first, though, Brian Hartgen is the co-founder of Hartgen Consultancy, and they make lots of really cool accessibility tools, including JSA, JDictate, and the topic of today's discussion, which is Lisi. Lisi has recently been updated to its latest version, 11.5, and last week I caught up with Brian to learn all about what Lisi is and what's new in the software. So here's what happened when I caught up with Brian last week. So joining me now on Talking Technology, I'm really excited to be joined all the way from the UK by Brian Hartgen. Brian, how are you? OK, thank you, and it's a real pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity today. No worries at all. So, Brian, you're the co-founder of Hartgen Consultancy, and you guys develop a number of different products, JSA, which is a tool for linking JAWS and Dragon Naturally Speaking, as is your other product, JDictate. But the product that we're here to talk about today is Lisi. And you've just released a brand new version of Lisi, and we'll get into all of that. But I suppose for those who are new to this, who aren't familiar with Lisi, what is Lisi? OK, so Lisi is a powerful collection of tools, scripts, and accessible applications designed to make JAWS for Windows more productive, more flexible, and more enjoyable to use. It started back in 2014. My wife thought back to the days when she purchased her first computer, and she thought it'd be a really good idea to build a set of tools to help people get started. I'm sure we all remember those days, if we think back far enough. And when that was released, a lot of what I would call intermediate to advanced users of JAWS really wanted a slice of some of that. They wanted some of the tools that had been put in there. And that's where what used to be called Lisi Advanced was born. And the vast majority of people actually purchasing the product, I would say, had an intermediate to advanced JAWS knowledge. OK, so you mentioned there Lisi Advanced. So that, as of now, is just called Lisi, as of just recently. So if someone is already a JAWS user, what are they getting by adding Lisi to this? Because this is a paid software, so you would have your JAWS license and you would, if you feel it's worth it for you, you will purchase Lisi on top of that. What are you getting? You mentioned some of those tools there. So you're getting, until 11.5 came along, which is the version that we've just released, you're getting about 50 or 60 different tools and script packages with it. So things like easy ways of reproducing large blocks of text, either through lists or by typing abbreviations, your own form of shorthand, bookmarking text passages on web pages and in Word documents. A lot of people like search and lookup tools, so that's one of the most popular features. I'm thinking here about being able to more easily search, even by something as simple and straightforward as Google and YouTube, or something a bit more sophisticated like Amazon and eBay. You type in what you want to search for, you get a convenient list of those results and you can get summaries and so on. Through to things like we launched a module last year called Lisi Sports and Games. So you can actually keep track of different sports and game events as they're happening. You can get live scores. If you missed a game, you can look up and find out what happened. There's also a weather app, a news app, all built into there. We've had all these for years and chat GPT, everybody absolutely, well I say everybody, but lots of people love the simplicity and ease of use of that. And I think this is what we're getting to. It's about making things very efficient. So you've got script packages to make various tools more efficient, but also it's the ease of use of being able to work with these things. And that's what a lot of people like. So it is currently, you know, it's really for JAWS users in addition to the regular version of JAWS, they would add Lisi on top. Notably, it doesn't support NVDA currently. Why is that at the moment or is that something that you ever see changing? You say currently at the moment, but it will not change, you see. There's no ambiguity there. No ambiguity at all. I'm perfectly upfront about it. One of the reasons I think that Lisi has been successful is because of the fact that there's a lot of JAWS scripting behind the various applications. And particularly in version 11.5, for example, it's not just a question of building standalone applications. Anybody can do that these days. You only need an AI agent to do that kind of thing if you want to do it. But it's what happens that goes behind it. So if you can create the best accessible application in the world, but each screen reader had its has, its idiosyncrasies, the things that it speaks when you move into and out of dialogue boxes, those sorts of things. And that's where JAWS scripting comes into play. And braille support is a really good example of where Lisi works with JAWS and also the applications that I'm designing. So it's a combination of these things. A lot of people when they design apps, standalone apps, they forget about braille altogether. It's like it doesn't exist. So if you get a message which is spoken as part of your application, there's no indication there on the braille display as to what the screen reader said. And JAWS has always been pretty good at braille. So I'm able to use my knowledge of both of these kinds of tools to get the use of the best experience. And to answer your question, it's a long way of answering it. But that is what I'm trying to give people. I'm trying to give people the best quality experience my knowledge is capable of doing. And that means using JAWS in my book. Oh, OK, fair enough. So right then, let's dive into some of the, no, you get to go into the fun part now, Brian, the actual product itself. So we obviously, as you said, there's 50 or 60 features there. So we are not going to be able to do this. We will be here all day and night, but let's dive into some of the big ones. So one of the features that you've added in Lisi 11.5 is the media center. So this, if I'm understanding correctly, can handle things like radio, podcasts and other media types. Am I understanding that right? Yes. So you can work with regular audio and video files. There's no problem there. But also it has other components, a radio directory. In fact, it searches three different radio directories. And we've done this for a very long time now, but I guess the difference here is that we have something called the Lisi media player that goes alongside it. So people can use their own audio players if that's what they want to do to feed the audio to it. So if someone prefers VLC or WinApp, something like that, they can use it. But using the Lisi media player, it gives you a lot of additional advantages. And of course, it's completely accessible. So yes, there is a large radio element to this. Also, there is something called sound control, which allows you to do things like, let's say you've got a number of apps open. Maybe you're listening to something via the web in your browser and you want to turn just that part of it down so that you can hear what your Jaws is saying. You're able to do that in a very accessible way. So individually adjust the volume of different apps and you can adjust the recording properties. You can also adjust some of the Jaws audio tools like audio ducking and that kind of thing. And the other major area is podcasts. So you can search for podcasts. You can obviously stream them if that's what you want to do. You can download those files to your computer. And I noticed that your podcast, particularly, supports chapter marks, and I must congratulate you on that. Thank you. OK, because it's a very useful way of being able to move through it. Well, we support chapter marks as well. OK, so you can use keystrokes in order to move through those. In fact, you can bring up a list of chapters as well. And they are all appropriately named according to the metadata that we can get out of them. So maybe I give you a quick, just a very quick demo of what you might experience there. For sure. OK, so. Yes, I'm in the podcast element here, so I'm just going to tap. Now that's you, I believe. That is indeed us. Yes. OK. Well, I thought you were called Vision Ireland, in fact. So I'm going to rename that. I'll just press F2. Rename podcast feed dialogue. And I'll just type Vision Ireland so that when I come to listen to you in the future, I know what we're talking about. Podcast renamed. List box Lisa Media said. And it said podcast renamed. It also said that on my Braille display in front of me as well. So Vision Ireland. So it's now called Vision Ireland. So I'll go into that episode, 227 episodes for talking technology with V.I Labs episodes list box. What does Vision Ireland want from the budget talking? So that is your most recent episode. And we'll just have a listen in full to what it said there. What does Vision Ireland want from the budget talking technology episode 116, 14 July 2026, 40% played. So it said 40% played. So I've listened to almost half of that. Now, of course, I could press enter in order to play that from where I left off if I want to. Or we can tap through. And I think this is the important thing. We have a number of ways of you being able to get help and to be able to explore. So we're not expecting you to remember a whole bunch of keystrokes. They are there. There are lots of them. So if you want to be efficient, then you can be. But you can press insert F1, which is a standard JAWS context sensitive help keystroke. And that gives you really context sensitive help relative to where you are. But we can also press tab. And I think this is important that we have a number of different controls, not only for the reason that I've just set out, but also sighted people who are training blind or partially sighted people to use this software, they need controls on the screen as well that they can instantly look at so that they can give people guidance. So let's just tap through. No, no, on this episode of talking technology, we die. So there you are. You've got your show notes and you can read those if you want to. I'm just going to tap through a few more controls and just talk you through them. Play episode button. So obviously, we could have done that anyway by pressing enter. But we've got a button there to do it. Download file button. You can download the file to the computer, go note the browser button. Now, I think this is an important one. Show notes in browser, because what we've done there, as you may have picked up on, we've got the show notes in a read only edit field. And that only goes so far because obviously, if you've got links, hyperlinks in the show notes that you want people to refer to, we need them rendered in an alternative way. So what that will do is bring the show notes into your web browser so that the links are rendered correctly. Transcribe episode button. Now, this is probably the most interesting thing apart from listening to the audio. And this is to transcribe the episode. So I won't do it now. But if you were to press enter or space on that, what it would do is it would transcribe the episode for you. And I would guess, in fact, I ran it earlier on just to double check it. It will take about 40 seconds to transcribe one of your episodes. OK. So it's fairly quick and it's accurate. The other thing we can do there, once we've got the transcription, you don't have to read it all if you don't want to, there is a summary button. So what that would do is it will just grab the main points for you as to what the podcast contained. And that's huge for someone who's deafblind too. Yes, it is. Definitely. Yeah. And what it does is it actually when you get when you've got the transcript, it breaks it down into different speakers. So we don't know the names of those people, but we can say speaker one, speaker two, etc. It's about efficiency ultimately then, Brian, isn't it? Yes, it is. A lot of it is about efficiency. So at least it does include, for example, scripts for WhatsApp. And I don't know whether you use WhatsApp yourself, but particularly at the weekend, I like to use WhatsApp in groups. And I like to be able to read, for example, the last eight or nine messages. I might want to copy parts out of those messages. I might want to condense some of the information that Jaws ordinarily gives a WhatsApp user. So for example, I might not want to hear the phone number. I might not want to hear a lot of the tutorial based information. We want to filter all that out. So yes, a lot of what Lisi is about is efficiency. And as I've said, absolutely every component of Lisi has a dedicated shortcut key associated with it. So if we dive into, I guess, one of those most fundamental keyboard and computer skills, which I guess for a lot of people is sending an email, how can Lisi help with that task when we have services like whether it's Outlook or whatever, that already have relatively OK keyboard access with Jaws? We don't do anything with email at all at the moment. No. OK. No. Now, one of the main questions that people have asked is bearing in mind, you've got all these other things going on. Can you develop an email client? Well, there is only one of me, actually, and I do have a prototype for an email client, but it's just a question of time to finish that off. But I think it's actually quite important because obviously there is talk of the Outlook Classic no longer being supported in a few years. Some of us are saying that the new modern Outlook isn't all that it could be at the moment. And so, yes, there will be a need for an email client of some sort, but at the moment, no, we don't do anything with email. One of the other things you do have as of 11.5 is Lisi Word. You were mentioning to me before we started recording that this has been one of the features that you've had the best response to so far. So talk to me a little bit about Lisi Word and how did it even come about, I guess? Well, it came about because a lot of these other apps were being developed for Lisi 11.5 and a lot of the beta testers that I have access to, they were saying it would be really good to have a word processor that was a lot more than perhaps Notepad was offering. We wanted similar functionality to Notepad, but not we wanted it to go perhaps a little bit further. So Lisi Word is a lightweight word processor, say lightweight in the context of it actually loads very fast because you don't want to be waiting around an age just to write something down. It has a standard menu bar, but it can do a lot of the usual things that you would expect from a word processor. So it can do some basic formatting like changing font size and style, emboldening, also centering, other text alignment, that sort of thing, find and replace bookmarks. As I say, the sorts of things you would expect, all very accessible, but there are lots of additional tools in there as well. There is a whole AI component associated with it. You don't have to use it, but you can if you want to. So you can ask questions about your document. You can have it summarized in different ways. You can do a grammar check, all those sorts of things that AI is very good at doing. There is also a very good PDF component. Now I get a lot of PDFs myself and I've tried all kinds of solutions to really ensure that they are accessible. Now these range from PDF invoices that I often get through to other kinds of files and they're just not particularly accessible whichever tool you use. So what Leasy Word does, it has three levels of PDF analysis. So when you open a PDF file in Leasy Word, what we do is go through it very quickly page by page and try and rearrange that text according to the rules I've set out as to how I think the PDF file should be laid out. Now we do it page by page because if you've got an inaccessible table on page 29, then we need to do something with that, but the rest of the document might be okay. So we can't just do a one stop shop and analysis and say yes, this PDF is completely accessible. We need to examine it a bit more thoroughly than that, but it does take only a few seconds to open. So we can't cater for every single PDF file. So the next level is called Enhanced PDF Detection and what that does is it sends it off to a PDF analysis service that as a commercial company we pay a commercial license for and it brings it back and that is usually as much as you need. It's usually done a very accessible nice job on that PDF. Now if that fails and it can sometimes, then you have the third level which is where the document can be sent to chat GPT and again there is a very sophisticated prompt that runs with that to tell chat GPT what to do with that file and it will bring it back for you in an accessible way. Wow, really cool. So very versatile stuff there and you mentioned there's been a few things there now so there's been the transcription, there's been the summaries, lots of that using AI and I know with some tools like this previously people have had to get API keys and stuff like that and it's been a little bit tricky for some I think it would be fair to say. Is that the case with Lisi or how does that work? Okay, so we do have a chat GPT dedicated interface as well outside of these tools so you can use it from any application and I wrote that at the beginning of 2025 and again people tell me they really like the simplicity of it because it brings back the response and once it's brought back then I do a lot with it to present that information so that it's nice and easy to read and you can save that information if you want. Now to answer your question, if a person is not in work then we can provide an API key for exclusive use with Lisi so you can't use it with any other tool, we're not actually going to tell you what it is even but it will be applied to your individual jaw's serial number so when you come to use it then it will just use it straight away, you'll be able to work with chat GPT. Obviously if a person is in employment or using it for employment purposes I don't really see why we should pay for that but certainly if a person is not then we're very happy to do it so all a person would need to do is ask for the chat GPT API key to be applied to their jaw serial number and it's just a matter of a few seconds before they're up and running. Okay, very good. Do you want to give us a quick demo of that chat GPT feature? Yes, I definitely could do that so all I need to do from within any application is press a couple of keys on the keyboard. Ask chat GPT dialogue, type what you would like to ask chat GPT then press enter. Okay so straightforward as that and how about I type something like tell me the top news stories in Ireland at the moment. Tell me the top news stories in Ireland at the moment. I'll just press enter, okay and there's a sound there which may or may not come over to you but it is ticking away there while it gets the response from chat GPT. Brilliant. Now it is taking a little while and oh there it goes. Here are some of the top current news stories in Ireland as of late July 2026. Okay so we'll go through that in just a second. It took a little while because obviously it's researching that information. Okay so if I asked it for example what is the meaning of the word satisfactory it's going to tell me that far more quickly than because it hasn't got anything. It doesn't need to search the web there really. That's right. So now we've got a screen which is displayed in the Jaws results viewer and this is something that Vispero themselves use quite a lot and I've used it for many years. So we can arrow through this text. It's just HTML essentially. Blank. Separator. Blank. Heading level 2-1. Legal aid dispute escalates for criminal defence solicitors. Blank. Criminal defence solicitors nationwide are staging a major protest over changes to how legal aid is paid. The government has moved to a flat fee model M dash euro signed 520. For case M dash regardless of how many court appearances are involved replaced. Okay so what it's doing there is it's formatted it in a very nice way for you. So where there is key information I've divided it up into headings as you heard there so you can easily move through it with quick navigation keys. If there's information that needs to be presented in a table then we'll do that so that you can use the table navigation keys in order to move through it cell by cell. That kind of thing. Now if I wanted to I could ask a follow up question of course or I can save that as a conversation and lots of people do save their previous chats and then when you load it back what it's going to do you pull the conversation from a list that you've stored you press enter on that and it will give a brief summary of that conversation. It's very brief it's about 30 words or so so that you can pick up the thread again so you know exactly what it is that you talked about. Very cool. So I guess then to get down to the business side of things where can people find out more and as I said there's so much leasy can do but where can people find out more decide to maybe get a trial maybe purchase leasy all of that good stuff. The best place to go is our website which is harchandconsultancy.com that's h-a-r-t-g-e-n consultancy.com and there is a link on there it's on every page in fact and it's called leasy central if you just go there you'll be able to read chapter and verse on the leasy product. The cost of it is 70 pounds and now I don't know what that is in euros so I'm just going to work it out okay so that is 70 g-b-e-u-r I think that's the right abbreviation there we are now see how quick I did that and that I guess I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that's a leasy feature that is a leasy feature very cool it is that is the best place to go harchandconsultancy.com and you'll get all the information there super stuff and you do have other products as well jay say jay dictate they've been around for quite a while now but they're still alive and kicking they're still doing really good stuff people can find out more on the websites too definitely we also have a training page so if you just go to training you'll find all the different training courses that are available there as well brian an absolute pleasure for now thank you so much thank you very much and the very best of luck with the podcast thanks so much to brian for that a really interesting conversation and a really interesting tool leasy is as well and yeah you can learn more about that on their website harchandconsultancy.com that's h-a-r-t-g-e-n consultancy.com right though now if you do want to get in touch with us about that or anything that we've discussed in the show you can send us a whatsapp if you would like the number that you need there is 086-199-0011 and you can use the country code 353 if you're messaging us from abroad or you can send us an email if you would like to content at vi.ie but now though it is time to catch up with daniel for your latest talking technology news this is talking technology news so with your latest talking technology news i'm daniel done be my eyes is coming to the mac be my eyes has started as a mobile app that allowed blind users to connect with sighted volunteers but it has since expanded to become a suite of different ai tools now both the free consumer version of be my eyes as well as be my eyes workplace are launching on the mac os platform the announcement was made at the nfp which is the national federation of the blind national convention which took place in austin texas in recent weeks desktop computing remains at the center of how people work create and communicate said mike buckley ceo of be my eyes by bringing both our free consumer experience and our enterprise solution to mac os we're ensuring that blind and low vision users don't have to choose between their preferred platform and accessible ai powered visual assistance be my eyes is now available to our users no matter what computing platform they have this flexibility is ultimately a good thing as it gives people options time will tell if we see increased usage of the mac in the workplace for blind people but for those who have already made that leap this will be a welcome announcement how does windows compare to mac for you do let us know with a whatsapp vice note amazon has started rolling out a beta version of alexa plus to irish users in an email sent to some customers as amazon has said this is an early look at what we're working on the experience is running on beta software and isn't still in active development you'll certainly run into some bugs for example the slowness mispronunciations or inaccurate information your feedback will be critical in defining what the alexa plus experience will be in ireland and we appreciate your help in the united states alexa plus is behind a subscription with a free version available it's currently unclear if the same model will eventually apply in ireland it's important to point out to people that their existing alexa will continue working as normal and there is no need to change anything this is just amazon experimenting to see how alexa could become more capable in the future is there something that you would like to see alexa do down the road that it doesn't do currently do let us know and finally this week the web aim screen reader survey has now launched this survey takes place every two years and looks at the preferences of screen reader users as well as their usage patterns the survey can tell us what screen readers are popular and where and how people feel about the current state of digital accessibility online and how screen reader users navigate the internet in the first place the service findings are often used by organizations like vision ireland and others to advocate for better digital accessibility questions about ai usage are also included in this year's survey the more people complete the survey the better so we have it linked in our show notes you will also find a link to another survey that vision ireland is conducting on digital accessibility for shopping apps we are trying to explore if loyalty schemes that require the use of a digital platform like an app have caused you to miss out on savings due to those apps being inaccessible those findings will then be used to advocate for stronger enforcement of digital accessibility rules that survey is much shorter than the screen reader survey and only contains four tick-box questions so if you have a few minutes we would appreciate your insight that is going to be linked in the show notes also our courses are on a break for august but we have lots of exciting talking technology episodes on the way so do be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast for now though it's back to you david cheers daniel yeah some really interesting stuff there it's well worth if you do have a few minutes to fill in those surveys we'll have them linked in the show notes that's the web aim or web aim i don't know which way they like to pronounce it that's screen reader survey and the survey from vision ireland both useful points of information uh that we can use to let our voices be heard which is always a good thing um but there is a few stories that we didn't touch on in the news namely ai is going rogue basically everywhere joe yeah well um first of all it's both at crow park crow park where um maybe one dollar and finally there was a bar there i think it was called the crossbar or something it was up on um one of the carpet floors and um you had to tap your scan your bank card on the way in and also your face and uh it was put down as a frictionless bar but uh unfortunately it ended up causing a bit of friction because um when you went up to get your drink uh a lot of customers reported that they were overcharged up to three times the amount so maybe when they went home i think the wife might have thought they drank three times the amount to guinness as they actually did because the bank account showed that um yeah they were very much so overcharged and our national moanfest called live line uh they started calling in and giving out about this this um frictionless bar so um but apparently everybody's got their money back now and that's good things are are going to improve next time around so bush it does show ai can go rogue and um i do have a problem with uh these kind of things these ai shops and ai frictionless bars there's one in ai shop in the airport as well actually but um yeah i do have a little bit of a problem when there's no uh customer service there to keep an eye on things joe what would happen if you took your twin brother to that match well that's a good question hopefully i'll be using his car that's all i've said what are you is getting a free ride and you're just hoping it's it's yourself like isn't it yeah yeah that's interesting yeah ai also went rogue uh open ai doing some testing last week um and they managed to well rather their ai boss or their ai agent managed to gain access to the internet uh and cause a cyber breach at another ai company called hugging face um crazy stuff that ai is just deciding ah i'm gonna have a you know gonna hack that there now and see what we do you know um crazy world we live in now at this point isn't it i am kind of surprised that that hasn't happened a lot earlier and i do predict it will happen a lot more often because um these ai people allowing ai do a lot more stuff for them but there is going to be cases where um some some ai is rogue so just be very careful what you allow and what privacy you share with ai going forward and um don't always give out about the eu or maybe even our own irish laws having restrictions on ai because it is a little bit early even though it's out a few years now it's still early days to be letting ai control things i do want to give ai access to like i just want to set up like a burner email and a few other bits and let it have fun in an isolated environment just to see what happens um and see what i can actually make happen with uh with uh ai that has access to some actual infrastructure which could be fun uh yeah how was the film with skynet is that where we're headed yeah it could well be daniel uh it could well be where some would say we're nearly there already uh nearly there but yeah wild times uh i know some people are going to say that they're going to find the that accessible ai shopping thing a little bit more accessible so it's gonna we're gonna have some interesting questions in the next couple of years um yeah but exciting times ahead and maybe perhaps some slightly scary times ahead as well but who knows um it's going to be a fun time uh what's going to be interesting to observe we need a focus group david one of those famous focus groups where we have our say and uh make changes but uh as as you said watch this space and and let the next year or two um see if if this is going to be a good or a bad thing absolutely there you go and uh be my eyes coming into the mac joe um i know you're uh firmly a windows user uh but this is ultimately a good thing it gives people options i guess oh definitely i'd have to be my eyes workplace for anyone that's in um work that wants that uh extra hand i suppose in the background um you can pay a subscription or you can get your workplace to pay a subscription to be my eyes and get um um help help in the in the background with different tasks um but yeah look be my eyes it's like a constant um wave of of of news every week that they they kind of link in with somebody whether if it's not hilton hotels or on major airport in the world they're there i have to hand it to them they really are um being and doing well as i think they're still a not for profit company but they're doing really well at integrating and getting their leg in every door if you know what i mean yeah there you go it's a very interesting one to watch they they seem to be very proactive there for sure uh but now uh both be my eyes and its sister paid product be my eyes workplace are available on the mac if you are using a mac with voiceover or zoom or anything like that there uh certainly an interesting one for sure that announced at the nfb uh convention in the states there was lots of other things at the nfb convention in the states as well there was um a braille uh kind of uh yeah what would you call it i guess uh not even braille really but a learning uh tool for touch typing so it's a keyboard in a basically a computer in a keyboard that is literally designed as a dedicated touch typing teaching aid that's a tongue twister um but uh yeah that is being done by the american printing house for the blind and that will be coming uh really soon as well and vispero um who make jaws they were showing off some ai features that are coming to jaws in the future as well so lots of stuff this this place keeps moving forward doesn't it oh keeps moving forward that keyboard might be good for schools or people even in rehabilitation want to learn how to type again things like that so yeah i'm looking forward to seeing that whatever comes over here to this side of the world absolutely there you go um well listen lots of interesting stuff as we said happens this week uh happened this week even uh if you do want to let us know your thoughts on it we'd absolutely love to hear all about them uh you can send us a whatsapp 086-199-0011 or you can send us an email to content at vi.ie uh but for now though that is our show thank you so so much for listening uh we really hope you've enjoyed it we will be back in two weeks time with another episode of talking technology episode 118 that one's on the way uh but for now stay safe thanks for listening and we'll see you next time thanks for listening to the talking technology podcast with vi labs if you'd like to support our show please visit vi.ie slash donate talking technology is proudly sponsored by i a labs the market leader in digital accessibility services i a labs digital inclusion your legal obligation