Excellent account Cearbhall, thanks.
Chris, keep us posted. I'm still waiting to see a full-scale
implemetation of NaviLens in an institution such as a hospital.
Cheers,
Adrian
On 2023-12-02 20:45, Chris Egan wrote:
Great notes Cearbhall thanks
Chris
Sent from my iPhone
On 2 Dec 2023, at 14:52, Cearbhall O'Meadhra <cearbhall.omeadhra@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Cork notes Saturday 2nd of December 2023
Participants: 9
Apologies: Jackie.
The past week saw Giovanna, a visiting student from the University of Virginia to UCC, collecting data for a new navigation system that she is developing. The system consists of a belt of six vibrating sensors that are arranged around the torso of the user. Each buzzer can be set to a low or high intensity or a short or longer duration to indicate different instructions to the wearer. The current exercise involves collecting user attitude and awareness data along with feedback on the effectiveness of the buzzers to communicate a range of instructions. This could be a valuable tool when it is fully developed.
Paul was caught bout by the fact that Voiceover was jumping out of position while entering the security code to open his phone after updating to IOS 17. Ken recognised that the trouble was caused because the typing mode had shifted to Touch mode when Paul normally has it set to Direct Typing. Paul was delighted to find that this was the right explanation.
Chris explained how to carry out a soft reset on iPhones with no home button. Pressing the volume up and releasing it. Then the volume down and releasing it. Followed by a long press of the Power button.
Ann Marie wondered if Audible was attempting to save space by removing a book from the library. She was at a loss to know where the finished book had gone to. Ken and Stuart were able to point out that the book is moved into the cloud and that this is controlled by a setting under profile within the Audible app. It was noted that there was a danger that a book might be removed before the user had finished listening to it if they fell asleep before it finished. The setting can be found at: profile> settings > Data and Storage >Auto Remove: On / Off
Adrian uses Book share from Vision Ireland which is built-in to the Easy Reader app. These are all eBooks. There are no audio books in this system.
Mention of audio books brought to mind the AI voices that Apple released earlier in 2023 but nobody had any experience of using them as yet. Perhaps future apps will begin to use them. the speech quality is excellent and includes breathing sounds that make them appear more natural.
Ken had a problem with the latest IOS update 17.2.2. He found that the phone was inserting words to complete a phrase that he was not intending to use. For example: On typing "Good " the phone automatically added " morning" in real text that he had then to delete before dictating his own chosen phrase of "evening", for example.
After exhausting all possible controls that might stop this activity, he ended up reluctantly turning off predictive text and auto-fill text.
Stuart also had a problem with the latest release of IOS 17 in which blocks of text are being read twice. He also found that after copying the text and pasting it elsewhere, the text appeared twice in the pasting area.
Ann Marie had a problem with NVDA in which she was unable to read an entire text continuously in Microsoft word with NVDA plus Down-Arrow. Various attempts were made to find out what was causing the problem but without success. She was still only able to read one word or a single line but not the full page. This needs some more research to be carried out.
Chris told of an unpleasant experience in Limerick Regional Hospital in which the security officer incorrectly refused to allow him to bring his guide dog into the hospital. After Chris called the Matron when no access officer could be identified, he was told that he could, indeed, bring in his guide dog and that the security guard was not correct. Following this experience, Chris received a phone call from the newly appointed Access Officer inviting him to speak to a special meeting of staff and other patients with disabilities on the value of the guide dog and how it was essential to permit access to the hospital as long as other users were not upset by the presence of a dog. There is now hope that the hospital policy will be updated to make sure that this obstacle is removed. Chris introduced the hospital meeting to the Navilens guiding system. This system was so well received that there is hope that the limerick hospital will adopt it and make the Navilens tags visible throughout the hospital.
This would set an excellent precedent for other Irish hospitals.
The meeting drew to a close with discussions of the Apple watch, Voice messaging and the effectiveness of Siri as a more secure means of messaging.
The meeting ended.
All the best,
Cearbhall
m +353 (0)833323487 e: cearbhall.omeadhra@xxxxxxx
