Attendance: 11
We have had a week of deeply cold weather in which Sligo was the worst off
with black ice and snow making it dangerous to walk with a guide dog.
However, the dogs loved the snow and rolled happily about in it to the
consternation of their owners. Washing hoses suffered with frozen spray guns
and blocked tubes! Needless to say, there were many suggestions as to how
best to manage hoses and sprays in freezing weather, which will, no doubt,
improve matters for all.
Dominique arrived with a new laptop running Windows 11. She ran the web-based
version of Microsoft 365 and found that she was not happy with it. With the
help of VI-labs, she reinstalled Office 219 to bring her back to more
familiar tools. She was disturbed to find that Zoom and Teams were no longer
configured as before and the meeting supplied advice on how to set up these
programs for ease of use in the future.
Jackie had a Sadd story to relate of her experience with Navi lens. She had
built up a library of codes for her entire DVD collection and was
experimenting with other uses of Navi lens when the program died without
explanation. She established that it was still working by scanning a cereal
box and receiving the usual range of information from it. Desperately, she
uninstalled Navi lens and reinstalled it to see if that would improve
matters. The result was that all her library of carefully created codes
disappeared off her device. She rescanned a box of cereal and that worked
because Kellogg's QR codes are public.
Now, all of the dB d's have to be rescanned and new codes created.
Chris had a positive experience with the original version of Microsoft
Soundscape. It still works fine to call out his markers and features in the
local landscape even though the app is no longer supported by Microsoft.
Cearbhall recommended that he try the Scottish version of Soundscape to have
the same experience but in a supported environment in case anything went
wrong in the future. Others found that the Soundscape Community version also
works very well. Jackie advised that Blind Square also gives the relevant
details that are delivered by Soundscape.
Ken reminded us that Apple officially announced its next big product. The
Apple Vision Pro. This is a mixed-reality headset, and is the first
mainstream headset with a dedicated screen reader built in. Vision Pro is a
mixed-reality headset. It's shaped like a bulky pair of swimming goggles and
has screens and lenses on the inside. When you wear Vision Pro you see the
real world through these screens, with a virtual overlay on top. You can
control vision pro in three ways. With your eyes, with your hands, and with
your voice. For those who are fully sighted, simply look at an object, pinch
your fingers, and it's activated. Sounds simple. For those with low vision,
it's going to be different though.
The Vision Pro has Voiceover built in. When Voiceover is on, you control it
by pinching different fingers together.
Follow this link for the full article on this important development:
https://vi.ie/apple-vision-pro-unleashing-untapped-potential-for-accessibilit
y/
Anne Marie tried the apple pencil to draw music notation and handwriting.
With the aid of her available vision, she is able to use the pen to good
effect.
Here is a full description of various ways in which the Apple pencil can do
the job:
https://support.apple.com/en-ie/HT211774
Stuart, Jackie and Ken were up to no good with Be My AI and Seeing AI. They
found that Be My AI gave more information than Seeing AI. Ken gave a
demonstration of Be My AI reading the contents of a photo from his own
records. Seeing AI did not give nearly as good a description.
Nothing daunted, the intrepid trio went on to get Be my AI to write a song
on the basis of a fantastic dream story that Ken concocted. Stuart used
Suno.ai https://www.suno.ai/
to create theme music for the song which Be My AI put together. The result
was a rich, tuneful, catchy song complete with chorus and incidental
melodies. Song contests beware!
Ger offered a hilarious video of an Australian TV program that explored the
difference between SIRI and Google AI. Ken shared the podcast of the program
and brought the house down with the performance of the two systems. Google AI
won hands down on detail, accuracy and delivery. SIRI was more inclined to
announce that the answer had been found on the internet with an invitation to
read it on screen. Google usually gave a full spoken answer to the questions
straight away.
have a listen at: https://youtu.be/j_53zWLVv4I?si=ElaTRSAWLPz-yUJz
The meeting ended.
All the best,
Cearbhall
m +353 (0)833323487 e: cearbhall.omeadhra@xxxxxxx