Thanks, Ken!
I hope the VI issues get sorted OK.
All the best,
Cearbhall
m +353 (0)833323487 e: cearbhall.omeadhra@xxxxxxx
From: fb-exchange-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <fb-exchange-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Kenneth Walsh
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2024 5:18 PM
To: fb-exchange@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [fb-exchange] Re: Cork Meeting February 10, 2024
Cearbhall
An outstanding report of today’s meeting. You captured the whole meeting.
Once again congratulations to Jackie on her success with Aib.
Cearbhall excellent you were able to sign up to the site.
On a side note I eventually completed The registration to my VIskill on Alexa
after pulling out what remaining hair I have left. I logged in to my VI account
on the vision ireland website. Apparently I had to put in my home address on
my account. Then I tried out the skill and bravo registration was completed.
Just waiting on a callback to test just to make sure.
Jackie has done all the above steps before I even did this yesterday with still
no success. It seems like it’s potluck if you get registered.
All The Best,
Ken
On 10 Feb 2024, at 16:56, Cearbhall O'Meadhra <cearbhall.omeadhra@xxxxxxx
<mailto:cearbhall.omeadhra@xxxxxxx> > wrote:
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
<mailto:cearbhall.omeadhra@xxxxxxx>
