Cearbhall, nice account of our proceedings, well done.
Paul
-----Original Message-----
From: fb-exchange-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <fb-exchange-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Cearbhall O'Meadhra
Sent: 30 October 2021 19:00
To: fb-exchange@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [fb-exchange] Re: Cork Meeting 30th. October 2021
Importance: Low
Thanks, Ken, and for your great mnagement of the meeting.
All the best,
Cearbhall
m +353 (0)833323487 Ph: _353 (0)1-2864623 e: cearbhall.omeadhra@xxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: fb-exchange-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <fb-exchange-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Kenneth Walsh
Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2021 5:45 PM
To: fb-exchange@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [fb-exchange] Re: Cork Meeting 30th. October 2021
Cearbhall
Fantastic job as always.
All The Best,
Ken
On 30 Oct 2021, at 15:48, Cearbhall O'Meadhra <cearbhall.omeadhra@xxxxxxx>===========================================================
wrote:
in attendance (13 participants)
Pat Walsh, Noreen Meagher, Dominique Farrell, Clare Cassidy, Martha
Parkinson, Ken Walsh, Jackie McBrearty, Derry Walsh Stuart Haxell,
Chris Egan, Paul Griffith Mary Rose Mullen, Cearbhall O'Meadhra.
The meeting welcomed Mary Rose Mullin, a New member from County Meath.
Mary Rose is an Android user and just getting used to access
technology on the phone.
Congratulations to Stuart on the recent publication of his article on
RP, Fighting Blindness and the forthcoming Retina conference. Stuart
has circulated a link to the article on the fb-exchange list. Clare
and Paul were also in the limelight recently, helping to make Irish
citizens more aware of issues relating to visual impairment.
Stuart described his success in playing blind tennis with a noisy
tennis ball that could be tracked by its sound. Jackie confirmed his
ability but topped it by declaring that she had beaten him hollow!
Clare surprised everyone by describing how useful she found her smart
watch, guiding her as she swam in the sea.
Jackie told of her shock at finding her email messages misspelled in
every word. On closer inspection, she found that the on-screen
keyboard had somehow converted to Irish without her knowing. she
acknowledged that the button to allow switching between language
keyboards is easy to hit by accident at the bottom of the screen beside the
home button.
For the benefit of the new member, Pat drew the attention of the
meeting to the difference between the symbol cane and the long cane.
The symbol cane is intended to warn others that the person carrying it
has a visual impairment while the long cane has a larger rotating head
that provides guidance to the user. There are two sizes of head for
use when walking over rough and very uneven surfaces.
Chris wondered if there was an app that could tell how close an
approaching vehicle was to a person about to cross the road. While
"Clue" could tell if you wandered off the straight and narrow, it was
felt that there was no app to tell how close a vehicle was to the user.
A passionate discussion followed with great stories of misguided crossings.
One crossing uses clackety noises that so similar to the noisy diesel
engine of a vehicle waiting at the crossing that it completely confused the
signal.
Jackie, ever adventurous, discovered that the local traffic engineer
has remote control of the sounds emitted by the traffic lights and can
change them on the fly. She was disappointed to find the he could not
play Happy Christmas for her.
Clare's watch is failing to hold its charge and it was thought that
her recent swimming adventures might have contributed to the problem
but she thought not. Jackie showed how the watch unlocks automatically
when the iPhone is turned on and vice versa if this feature is enabled
in both the iPhone and watch settings. This is a handy feature as she
can unlock her phone wearing a mask by using the watch and without the
mask using the iPhone. Dominique reminded watch users that there is a
water lock feature in the watch setting.
The rest of the meeting was taken up with shaggy guide dog stories.
With four guide dog owners at the meeting, there was plenty to talk
about. Mostly focussed on the demise of elderly guide dogs and when
they need to retire from service.
Ken pointed out that the latest update 15 enables screen sharing in Facetime.
This means that a person can share their own screen, videos or photos
with another during a Facetime session. Pat was able to report using
this feature to get advice from a sighted person on what his screen
contained but acknowledged that Voiceover users got little advantage
in reverse since the shared screen is a bitmap image and thus not
accessible. However, Jackie said that the iPhone is able to give a
very limited description of objects in a picture that give some idea of its
contents.
More information on this can be found at:
https://www.perkinselearning.org/technology/posts/automatic-image-desc
ription
s-ios
Jackie, demonstrating the screen descriptions, noted that a frequent
reference to "Depth of Field" get turning on and off and proved really
distracting without adding any meaning to the situation. Jackie, Ken
and Chris set about an extensive, forensic search to find where this
feature is controlled in photo settings to no avail. The concept of
"Depth of Field" was explained as giving focus to a particular item in
the picture while slightly blurring the background to give a more
realistic effect. A post-meeting search revealed that Apple is really
proud of this enhancement to its photographic tools, aiming at the
excellence of its model 11 to 13 range of products. The following set of
videos might help to explain this feature:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJbvQJFGnfgoption new in 15. depth
Note that there is no meeting next week as most members will be
attending the Retina conference next weekend.
The meeting ended.
All the best,
Cearbhall
m +353 (0)833323487 Ph: _353 (0)1-2864623 e:
cearbhall.omeadhra@xxxxxxx
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