Home-Based Tech Tools: What Really Helps When You Have Vision Loss

Hadley

Home-Based Tech Tools: What Really Helps When You Have Vision Loss

Presented by Ricky Enger

Ricky Enger: You might have heard about smart homes or smart devices for your home, but what exactly does that mean? And for someone with vision loss, what are the pros and cons of having these devices in your house that are connected and controlled by your smart phone or a voice assistant? In this episode, Steven Scott of the Double Tap Podcast joins us as we share our personal experiences and opinions on smart devices. I'm Ricky Enger and this is Hadley Presents. Welcome to the show, Steven.

Steven Scott: Hey, Ricky. Lovely to be back.

Ricky Enger: It is wonderful to have you back and we always have a fantastic time. I suspect today will be no different. We're going to have a lot of fun talking about smart homes today. I'm really looking forward to it. Before we dive into that, for the three or four people who may not know who you are, why don't you just go through a quick intro, tell us a bit about who you are and what you do.

Steven Scott: Well, that's very kind. I'm sure it's more than that, but yes, I'm Steven Scott. I host a daily technology show from the blindness perspective called Double Tap. And since the last time we spoke to you, we really are daily. We're on seven days a week. We do an hour every day. We don't expect you to keep up with that, but you are welcome to pick and choose whatever you like and come along for the tech. But what you can expect is a lot of interesting conversations between two blind guys talking about how we navigate life as blind people, as well as the technology we use.

Ricky Enger: We will have a link to that in the show notes for people to check out if you've not been a part of Double Tap before and it's well worth it. So I'm curious, I know that you, and maybe I'll regret this, it might take the whole episode just to talk about this part, but I'm curious what devices you have or really what category of device you have in your home that you would sort of consider a smart device. So, this would be something that you can operate either with your smartphone and/or a voice assistant that you can talk to like Google or Siri or Amazon’s device, Alexa. We tend to call that Lady A or the A lady because she’s always listening to her name and thinking we’re talking to her, but anyway, what devices do you have in this category?

Steven Scott: Well, it's interesting. A lot of people think because I'm into my tech that my home is absolutely buzzing with technology in every corner. And it actually isn't. I tend to keep my smart home quite simple and there's a good reason for that. I don't live here alone, Ricky. I have a wife who isn't as techy and wants to be able to use the technology as well. It's important actually when I'm doing it, and it helps me when I'm doing the show because I think, okay, I might get excited about the latest, greatest thing, but is she going to find this interesting? Is she going to enjoy this? Is she going to want to use it? Is she going to be able to understand how to use it? It needs to be simple. It needs to be uncomplicated. Not because she's incapable of learning all this or doing it. It's just that she's not as techy as I am. She's not into it in the same way. And so, she just wants to press a button, and a light comes on and press the button, the light goes off.

And what she doesn't want to happen is that when she presses the button, the light doesn't turn on and doesn't turn off. So, it's about compatibility with everyone in the home. It's also about something that is consistently good and functions well. And of course, then we can talk about accessibility of tools. And I have to say, the more you talk, the more you get into that discussion, the amount of options does narrow because you're trying to find accessible tools out of the box that are available that are not going to cost the earth are difficult. It's difficult to do that. So, I have the standard, if you like, smart speaker, as I would refer to her as Lady A.

And so, we all started playing with this in the house, and that was immediately an interesting device to bring into the home, which I think was one of the first smart tools where my wife really engaged. I was explaining to her, "You just talk to it. Just ask her a question. Ask her to play your favorite song." And it did. And she was blown away.

Ricky Enger: And I think that's the key, right? Is it feels natural.

Steven Scott: I think it is. And I think it's also when you show someone a tool like this, because look, I get very excited about lots of different tech and I can hear my wife's eyes rolling because she's like, "Yeah, whatever." And even friends of mine will say, "Yeah, but is that really a big deal? Does that matter?" And so, I think if people get excited by it and then they see what it can do or they hear what it can do or they can learn what it can do, then I think suddenly you feel, okay, I might be engaged by this. And a good example of this was years ago. I remember spending some time with some folks, and of course I never subscribed to the theory that age has anything to do with capability, right? I've heard this so many times in my life. "Oh, well, what about someone who's 85 who maybe doesn't understand how to use this technology?”

I think I've met a lot of 85-year-olds who could probably outdo me with technology. Exactly.

Ricky Enger: Yes.

Steven Scott: It's not about age, all right? It's about understanding and it's about willingness. Some people just don't care. Some people don't want to.

Ricky Enger: Yeah, it's a mindset.

Steven Scott: Absolutely. And so, what you have to do, if you really want to engage someone, show them what it can do for them. And I remember spending time teaching someone how to use an iPad. And what I did was focus on that person's need, what they wanted to do. And in those days, that person wanted to contact their son who lived in Australia and wanted to contact them via Skype. So, we spent time showing that person how to use Skype on an iPad, and they were blown away. And I said," Now, everything you've just learned today, you can apply that to any app on this device. Same things you've done, the same swipes, the same taps, all of that, you can use the same approach to everything." And one by one, slowly but surely that person was suddenly getting interested in all these new apps, these new things.

And prior to that, I couldn’t care less. And that's the key. It's getting someone hooked on what it can do for them. And it's the same with the smart home because the problem is, as you'll know, you go to a Best Buy, you go to any store and there's a mountain of technology options out there and it's not clear. It really isn't clear what works with what. People will tell you, “Well, does it work with Lady A? Has it got matter support?” And you think, what does that mean? What does any of that mean?" And so, what I tend to do is, and this is why I chose the Echo and why I stick in particular with the Echo, is because a lot of the tools, a lot of the smart home devices you buy are natively compatible with it. So, I don't have to think too far.

Ricky Enger: Yeah, right?

Steven Scott: And that makes a big difference in my buying decisions.

Ricky Enger: So, you are an A Lady person, and I am primarily a Google Home person. And for similar reasons, Google Home, it was sort of happening in parallel with Lady A here in the US. And for whatever reason, we chose Google Home and for the most part have stuck with it, although we do have Lady A devices and in some cases that works better. So, I imagine that you've got some smart lights. We have a couple, but it's sort of the same issue you talked about where we have guests over and they want to turn on the guest room light and they're reaching over to the lamp and it's like, no way, you have to say the word instead of. So smart lights are probably the least prevalent in our home, but we do have a doorbell camera, and I think you do as well. Is that right?

Steven Scott: Yeah. And again, I went with Ring and again, it was available first, one of the few that were. There were a lot of names flying around, but that one in particular seemed to be at the time the one everyone was talking about. And the challenge of course was accessibility. And it will always be a challenge with some of these doorbells. Some are better than others. Blink, for example, is another sub-brand of Amazon, which is a good brand. It's a little bit more affordable as well, which a lot of people like. And it seems to be a pretty accessible app. Strangely, it's a little bit more accessible than Ring, which is interesting because Ring's a more expensive version. Yeah.

Ricky Enger: Yeah. So I just want to pause and say that when we're talking about accessibility of these devices, what we're primarily talking about is not so much what you can ask the assistant to do and have it respond with, but more so what do you do in the app to set certain things up? Or if you are interfacing with that device using your phone and not a smart assistant, how accessible is that? So that tends to be where things fall apart, at least in my experience. Is that true for you as well?

Steven Scott: Yeah, I would say so. And that's the problem oftentimes. Now, I will say once you get past those issues, there are some real benefits to having the smart speaker almost be the hub in your home and connecting things through that. And of course, you have to go through a process. There's a process of connection that you have to do with all of these devices, irrespective of which one you buy. It may be that you buy a smart plug or a smart bulb or a doorbell, whether it be Ring or Blink or anyone else, you can connect it through what's called a skill. So, the Amazon Echo has a skill store, a little bit like if you've heard of the Apple App Store or the Google App Store, essentially a library, a catalog of things you can buy. Or in this case with the Amazon Skill Store, you can actually just get it for free.

They don't cost any money at all. I think they have brought in some that cost, but not many. And in particular, anything that connects to another device or allows your device, your Amazon Echo in this case, to connect to that. So, let's give you an example. My Ring doorbell has a skill that I can install on my Amazon Echo. I do that either by voice, I can say enable Ring doorbell skill to my device and it will tell me the process and do that. It's very simple actually. You just ask it and it does it. Or you can go through your app on your iPhone or your Android phone into the Lady A app. I always call it that name incidentally. I say Lady A because she's sitting right next to me and if I say her name, it'll just go off.

So, I call her Lady A, and I can go into the app store, and I can obviously find it there and I can enable it from there. And then what happens is it will link to my Ring, in my case, account, which will then allow for the doorbell to actually use the Amazon Echo as a chime, as a bell. So, when someone presses the Ring doorbell, suddenly on my Echo, it will say, "Bing bong, there's someone at your front door." But it can go further than that. I have to say that the number one reason I use this in this way, yeah, of course having the chime is really useful because it saves you having to have your phone loud all the time. The biggest reason for having one of these devices is that you can tell who's at the door and have a conversation with them before you open that door.

It's a great safety tool for many people who are at home alone, perhaps someone who is a little bit nervous, especially at night, if someone knocks on your door. And we'll talk about some of the cool things they're doing with doorbells to make it even easier to identify. But the number one thing for me is that I can speak to my Amazon Echo and I can say, "Lady A, talk to the front door." And what will happen is that Amazon Echo will initiate a connection with the doorbell, and I can talk to the person at the door and say, "Hi there, who's that? " And that person could say, "Oh, it's your postman. I've got a parcel for you." And I can say, "Great, can you just leave it there? And I'll come and get it in two seconds, no problem at all.”

And then I say, "Lady A, hang up." And in that interaction, I'm able to have a conversation with someone at the front door and I can know who that person was. They've left the parcel and I can go get it. That I think is possibly one of the best features of that particular combination.

Ricky Enger: I think that's a really good example of why you might want something smart. And that's the question that comes up a lot. Why should I care? So going back to finding that motivation for someone that isn't just, "Hey, this technology is cool." So, I think there might be a couple of other device categories and reasons that you might have smart devices in this category. For whatever reason, mine tend to be devices that shouldn't have touchscreens but do. So, if I want to turn on my oven or use my dishwasher, it's all a touch sensitive thing. And in some cases, it's difficult to label because if you are looking for where to press that label, well, you've just touched three other things in the process of doing that. So that's one reason that you might have, for example, a smart oven or a smart dishwasher. Do you have anything like this, these sort of kitchen appliances that are smart?

Steven Scott: I don't. And I'll tell you why, because when we moved into this house, and it was over 10 years ago, a lot of the appliances, if you like, were already installed and we were quite happy with them. And also, if you don't need to replace them, why? And honestly, they were the kind of devices that you could put a bump on a button, and you could quite easily set it up. And with a washing machine, for example, it's the same setting I'm using every time. I have a bump on that so I can just turn the dial, I can press the start button and walk away. The dishwasher is exactly the same. I know every time I turn, I press the button on the far left, I press the middle button twice, and then I press the far-right button, and I shut the door and off it goes and starts its thing.

I'll be honest, and this is kind of why you talk about smart devices as being really important. I do that because that's all I know what to do to get it started. There may be a million other functions of this thing, but I have no idea what they are, but it works. It works for me. I would like to engage more with the washing machine and the dishwasher, but doing that accessibly is a challenge unless I obviously go out and buy a brand-new machine. And I will at some point have to do that. And when I do, I will absolutely be looking at smart because like you say, through the app on my smartphone I’m able to control that device, get more out of it. Actually, there's a Samsung washing machine in the states available now. It's not one of the cheapest devices, I'll admit, but there is one out there now which does have its own built-in accessibility tool that you can actually listen to as you move around that touchscreen you talked about, it will actually speak aloud.

So, the technology is coming, it's kind of getting there, it's so far behind everything else. We are still reliant on the smartphone. And that's why often I'd say to people, if you're buying a new device, if you're buying a new appliance, the geeks like me will tell you, go buy the latest smart thing. Actually, sometimes the simpler option is the cheaper option and the more accessible one. The microwave that doesn't have a million buttons on it, but actually just has two dials, power and time. That might be all you need. And so, if that is the case, just do that, get a bump on, put it on the 10 and the 20 and the 30 or whatever you want in terms of timing and just lay it out to suit you. And talking air fryers are starting to become a thing, but there's so few and far between.

We're reliant on smartphone accessibility and we're also reliant on that smartphone accessibility being there and not being broken at any point. And that is a real problem. It might work today, but one update could come along into that app and break that accessibility and suddenly you're left with a device which you can no longer use independently. So that's always something to consider. The smarter it gets, the more potential risks there are. I'm not trying to put people off smart technology, but I just think people need to understand that it doesn't necessarily mean that it's better.

Ricky Enger: Right, exactly. And I think that's one of the biggest things to think about if you're purchasing something new is to have a plan in place. What happens if I wake up tomorrow and the accessibility of the app has changed or the connection with my smart assistant that I speak to has changed? Could I operate this device even if in a basic way, pressing that 10 second or 30 second button on the microwave, can I still use this or has it for all intents and purposes become a brick to me? So yeah, that's certainly a thing to think about. And this has happened unfortunately where I think there are some people with a particular air fryer, I believe it's Cosori and got really accustomed to being able to set the time, the temperature, and start the device without ever having to touch it. And suddenly, I don't know if it was the A Lady or Cosori updating, but now you have to find and press a start button in order to get that going.

Steven Scott: You see, this is why I quite like Lady A being the hub, because ultimately what I think about when it comes to accessibility is, you want something that is fairly untouchable. And nothing is untouchable and nothing is unbreakable. But if the purpose by the manufacturer is that you can use the Amazon Echo to talk to that device, if they have built that tool, then that tool should always, at least that base level should work, right? So, if we can talk a little bit about smart lights for a second, I want to go to that because in my home I have smart lights and the way we did it was I used Phillips Hugh. Now Phillips Hugh is a well-known brand. It's not a cheap brand, although they have come out with, they call it the essentials range, which are a little bit more affordable bulbs, which is good because for a lot of blind people, lighting is important, really important, especially for low vision, people who are losing vision over time, lighting is important.

And my wife is low vision, and she needs a lot of light. She really needs a lot of light. And the opposite, I could happily live in the darkness, but she likes light. And for that reason, I was thinking about a smart solution for her where when she comes into the house on a dark evening, the lights just come on. I just wanted lights to come on and there's lots of solutions for this. And these days, you can't turn around without falling over some motion activated light somewhere, but often these lights that you can buy stick onto the wall. You've probably heard about advertisements on Facebook or maybe you've seen them on television, these lights you can stick up in cupboards. I mean, you open the cupboard door, the light will come on. It's all great, but the problem is they're all battery operated.

So, you'd be forever charging things up. And they've made it a little bit easier, but still, I wanted lights that were fixed in the ceiling, in my case, little spotlight bulbs, and I wanted those to be able to just come on as we walk into the house and also when we go upstairs. And so that's what we did. I used a Phillips Hue motion sensor that I just stuck onto the wall. And I've had that now on the wall for, I think, four or five years, and I've never changed the battery in that once, which is interesting how long that lasts. But that little motion sensor, which is just a little device that you get, you get the lights, you plug them into the roof as normal. Even with smart lights, they're exactly the same as any other light. They don't use up any more energy.

In fact, because they're LED, they use less. So, they're cheaper than the halogen spotlight bulbs of old. I should say as well, you have a little device that you connect to the internet, and you connect this box to it called the Phillips Hue Bridge, and it literally does that. It is a bridge to connect to your lights, to your internet. And that box is kind of the brain, the operation of the brain of the whole thing. And you download the Phillips Hue app onto your smartphone, and you go through the process of adding the lights. That's a bit of a boring procedure because you have got to spend time trying to find the light and then connect. And sometimes it's fairly quick. It'll say, "Oh, we've found six lights." I tended to do it one by one, so I would know. And you can test the light by turning on and off on the app.

And you would see if you can see at all, you'd be able to see the light going on and off, and that is how you can identify it. You can name it. So, I could call it downstairs one, downstairs two, downstairs three, and so on. And that covers all my downstairs lights. And the motion sensor, again, it would say, "I found a motion sensor, where is the position of this?" And you can tell it while it's in my downstairs hall and I can now create a group and I can add my motion sensor and my downstairs one and my downstairs two and my downstairs three bulb. And then I can say, right, regarding this motion sensor, I want to set this up so that when motion is detected, the following happens. The lights come on at full brightness for 10 minutes. And that is how I set mine up.

And of course, I realize this is a time sensitive thing. You do have to go through it. It does take time, but it is accessible to do with a screen reader on a smartphone. And of course, if you're low vision, you can use a tool like Zoom on your smartphone, iPhone or Android, and navigate around the app and set it all up and essentially build your smart home within the Phillips Hue app. Now then, like I mentioned earlier about the Ring doorbell, I can go to my Amazon Echo app, and I can ask it to enable the Phillips Hue skill. So, you see, we've learned how to do the Ring. Now we can do the same with the lights and suddenly we're starting to build our smart home here and again, make Lady A the hub of the whole thing. And so now, because I have built my groups and I've called it downstairs and I've set one up for my living room and I've set one up for my office and I've set one up for here and the kitchen and wherever else, I can ask it to turn on the kitchen lights and all the kitchen lights will come on.

Or I can say, turn on all the lights and every light in the house will come on or turn off the bathroom lights or whatever you want. You can set it up to suit you. You can even change the brightness of them if it's too bright. You can change that. You can change the scene, all of this, and you can do it with your voice. So, the hub of the home being Lady A in my case makes it smart but makes it usable. Accessibility is one thing, but usability is another, and that's the key for me, building both.

Ricky Enger: Absolutely. Yeah. You've got to have something where you can speak to it in a natural way instead of having to memorize a set of commands that don't necessarily make sense. It's never going to come naturally in that case, and you're just going to be wishing for that light switch.

Steven Scott: Yes. And that's the other thing as well. Now you mentioned that at the top about having guests coming over and they turn the lights off. And the immediate thinking is, that's going to destroy my smart lights because you've just turned them all off. That means they've lost power. Does that mean they've forgotten everything that I've just told them? No, it doesn't. The good news is you can turn those lights back on again. They will default to an on state because that's what they would do. You can change all this in the app as well, but the default is that it would change it to be turned on, it will respond and turn all the lights on. And again, you could just say at that point, turn the lights off and it would do so. So, it doesn't forget anything. As I say, I've found it to be incredibly reliable.

I set and forget to some degree. I haven't changed any settings on my whole lights for about five years and they all work. So, it's a really good system.

Ricky Enger: That's awesome. And I think this has turned out to be a really balanced discussion. Neither one of us are saying, "Go out and make everything smart right now." But each of us has also given a reason why you might want to add a couple of smart things and kind of the benefits that that might bring to you. So, I just have one last question, and this maybe is the most difficult. It certainly is for me. If someone is thinking about getting these smart things and they've decided, okay, this is my hub, this is my speaker that I have, and I'm going to stick with that. So, I know at least that much. Now, because there are so many things on the market, if you're looking at smart lights or you're looking at a doorbell or you're looking at even a smart oven, what's your kind of process for researching and figuring out which is going to work without having to buy the thing first and discovering, oh, nope, that's not going to work, got to return that.

Steven Scott: Yeah. And that's a really good question because this is often the biggest challenge in our world is, yes, you can review the top five air fryers and you'll find a million YouTube videos with all the suggestions in the world, but the question is, what of those works for us as blind people? That's the challenge. My answer to that would be, check out Double Tap. It's a great daily show. We talk about this stuff every day. And we do try and be a resource. That's what we're for. We're here to not just talk about this stuff, but invite you, the audience to come on and actually talk as well. And I remember doing an episode about microwaves and the amount of people who got in touch with different ideas for microwaves from the cheapest to the most expensive and the smartest. And that's really what it's about.

It's about just being a place where people can come and get the information. And we've tried to create that information for you as well via our website, doubletaponair.com. So do check it out because I think you'll learn something about whatever it might be. And we even did one on outdoor cooking recently and all the amazing tools that people use that are accessible and some of the simple stuff as well. Ultimately, what I will say is if it comes to building a smart home, keep it simple. Start small. You don't have to buy all in one day. You don't have to do all that. Just take your time. As I say, start with a need because that's often what will drive you to do it. Start with what you need to do. Lighting is a good one. It's a good one to think about. I've had many blind people ask me this question, why as a blind person, do I even care if the lights are on or off?

And my answer to that is, well, two things. One, I'm assuming you'd have people over occasionally. And if that's the case, you might want the lights on. But here's the other thing. When they leave, you want to know those lights are off. Now, these smart lights can turn themselves off at a designated time. I have mindset, for example, to go with the sunset and the sunrise. So, they will go off at sunset if they're on. Simple as that. And that is a way of knowing my lights are off. So, it can actually work towards saving you money as well. And it'll also be useful if you're not in your home. You can have your home lights come on. As we used to do in the old days, we used to plug our lights into timers to turn our lights on and off when we were on holiday.

Of course, these days, we just use our smart lights for that.

Ricky Enger: Yeah. You're simulating that someone might be there. So yeah, absolutely. So many reasons to explore diving into this. And I think lights make a nice place to start and certainly reaching out to the community and Double Tap is a great example of learning from what other people have bought or share your good or bad experiences. I think that's what it's all about. Well, this has been so much fun, Steven. It's always great to have you stopping by. It’s always very informative and I hope to have you again sometime. We haven't scared you away yet. No,

Steven Scott: Not a ton. You never will.

Ricky Enger: Excellent.

Steven Scott: Thank you, Ricky.

Ricky Enger: Thanks so much. Got something to say? Share your thoughts about this episode of Hadley Presents or make suggestions for future episodes. We'd love to hear from you. Send us an email at [email protected]. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T at HadleyHelps.org or leave us a message at 847-784-2870. Thanks for listening.