Cork draft 10/02/2024
Participants: 10
Apologies: Chris
The group assembled With the sounds of Spring in the air and the mildest
winter in a long time in Ireland.
Everyone congratulated Jackie on her phenomenal success with AIB in
persuading them to provide access to online card services for Voiceover
users. The Voiceover user can now freeze the card, view all the card details
and execute all related tasks that were impossible to use up to now. Adrian
noticed that the screen automatically changes for people using Voiceover,
giving guiding instructions for the use of buttons, etc. The layout and
button labels are different for non-Voiceover users.
Well done, Jackie!
Jackie and Ken reported a major problem in launching the VI app in Alexa.
After a lengthy and frustrating period trying to complete the process they
each resorted to online help from the VI Labs team without success. They were
able to register their email and interact with the setup process. The Alexa
app reported a successful registration in the skill. However, when they then
tried to access the skill the system informed them that they were not
registered!
Ken was completely frustrated from getting to the skill on "MyVI". When he
clicked on the email a multitude of skills were listed int he app but MyVI
was not among them. With the help of VI Labs, it was discovered that the
interface was dropping the "V" and only displaying "MyI" to the search
engine. After the subscription was finally made, Ken found that the app
announced that he was not registered as soon as he tried to launch the skill!
Jackie had a similar experience when she tried to log in. Again, she was
successful in the initial registration but was informed that she was not
registered as soon as she launched the skill in MyVI! Furthermore, no email
arrived confirming her registration
Jackie has raised a ticket with Vision Ireland so let's hope they will
resolve this programming issue soon!
The VI skill in Alexa is useful when it works as there is a call back feature
which usually generates a quicker response than that sent in by email.
An important note from Jackie: To operate the search in Alexa, it is
essential to use one finger to "double tap and hold". Otherwise the search
field is dimmed.
Adrian had difficulties registering for the VI Newsletter. He found that the
VI Labs team had to resort to registering him manually to enable him to
succeed.
Some members complained that the Spell Check in MSWord 365 was not showing
the replacement text. Jaws did not report the replacement for the misspelled
word. The replacement could only be found out after the change had been made.
Others found that this problem was not present in Office 2016 in windows so
might be only a problem in Office 365. A call to "Be my Eyes" with a link to
Microsoft might help to identify the problem and raise a ticket with
Microsoft if necessary.
Cearbhall is looking to replace his iPhone SE 2022 whose battery only holds
the charge for about 2 hours. The group discussed various models and
confirmed that the only advantage in the iPhone 14 and 15 was the extra
cameras and visual tools together with a much more powerful battery. It was
recommended that he replace the battery and wait for a few months until a hew
version of the sE appeared in the market.
The new Way-finding centre launched by VI during the week, came in for
discussion. It was noted that the aeroplane section is French and not likely
to be met in Ireland. Likewise, the bus is a London bus and so not the type
to be met in Ireland. Jackie has raised a ticket with VI to ask them to
provide a bus to Dublin for those living in the West of Ireland and outside
the city to travel to the way-finding centre on the basis that it is not
reasonable to ask people to take a train to Dublin to find out how to access
a train.
This prompted all to praise the assistant staff at Irish stations whose
willingness to help is excellent and much appreciated. Unfortunately, some
complex stations like Heuston in Dublin, with eight platforms, can cause a
breakdown in assistance when the person giving the help is too far away to
meet the arriving passenger.
Ken drew the meeting's attention to the range of new help groups being
offered by Fighting Blindness including gardening, peer support, deaf and
vision loss, and more. All are listed on the Fighting Blindness web page or
by contacting Kathryn Synnott at the insight Office in Ely Place, Dublin.
Ken found that the audio would sometimes fail to come through his headphones
while on Zoom on the laptop. It seems that there are a few audio channels at
play when using Zoom. The system audio and the external headphones operate on
distinct channels that seem to be used by zoom in an unpredictable manner.
The meeting agreed that a special workshop on the use of audio in zoom might
be useful for everyone as audio is so essential to non-visual communication
with the computer.
Ger was delighted to find that Microsoft Edge was able to speak fluently in
Irish with an excellent blas to the satisfaction of a fluent Irish speaker.
We have to thank Ronan McGuirk and the trinity College development team for
the inclusion of the Irish synthesiser, Abair, in eSpeak. This is the speech
engine that Microsoft is using for spoken Irish by default.
Adrian described his recent update to Visionhub.ie and invited all to try to
join up. He has included the accessible hCaptcha which manages the "I am not
a robot" verification which usually requires the user to type visible
characters that are not accessible to mechanical systems and are very
difficult or actually impossible for a blind person to use.
Ken tried out the site at the meeting and all went smoothly. The HCaptia
tool completed the verification automatically and he was able to sign up
successfully. Stuart also managed to complete the process but only after a
small amount of difficulty. Adrian and Cearbhall went through the action
using Firefox and found that the Hcaptia tool was ineffective. However, it
worked like a dream with Microsoft edge and google chrome. Firefox is known
to operate differently from the other two browsers and this might explain the
difficulty.
The meeting ended.
All the best,
Cearbhall
m +353 (0)833323487 e: cearbhall.omeadhra@xxxxxxx
