(intro music)
Welcome to Hadley Presents.
I'm your host, Ricky Enger,
inviting you to sit back, relax,
and enjoy a conversation with the experts.
In this episode, tech podcaster,
Steven Scott joins us to discuss useful apps and gadgets.
Welcome to the show, Steven. So great to have you.
Oh, thank you, Ricky. It's great to be here.
So for people who don't know who you are,
why don't you just give us a brief intro,
tell us a bit about yourself
and where people might find you podcasting.
I'm a broadcaster, I'm a podcaster,
I'm a TV presenter.
I'm lots of different things.
Basically, wherever they tell me to go, I go.
I have worked in this business now
for 20 years this year, actually.
Working this out that my first paid gig was 20 years ago.
It's been incredible.
It's been an incredible ride to be doing this.
Working in initially commercial radio
and then moving into what essentially
is called in the UK, charity radio,
which is community-based content.
And the community radio here is a little bit,
it's either community by location,
by geography, or by interest.
I was part of the RNIB,
the Royal National Institute of Blind People in the UK,
who had a radio station they were building
and I went along and presented a morning show
for nine and a half years,
did the newspaper show first thing in the morning.
That was great fun. I loved it.
I realized that there was one thing missing in our world
and that was with all the rising
mainstream technology out there,
there was nobody talking about it.
And so I invented a show called Tech Talk,
which went on air for 10 years.
It was an incredible show
because it was the first show of its kind really,
that was on radio that allowed us blind people
to understand how mainstream tech,
and we talked about how that could be accessible.
Now, some of it wasn't accessible at that time,
but we talked about the workarounds that blind people used
so that it could be accessible.
From there, I started working
with accessible media in Canada
and we created Double Tap Canada, the radio show,
and then later they invited me to do a TV show,
to which I laughed, I thought it was a joke.
They said, no, it's not a joke.
Seriously, we'd like you to do this.
And I said, well, okay, let's try it.
I'm always up for a challenge.
And when I left RNIB last year, November last year,
I decided I wanted to take this all the way
and create a podcast that was kinda based out of the UK.
I wanted something that started from the UK
that talked about UK issues
and that was Blind Guy Talks Tech.
Here we are all these months in
and it's already very popular,
lots of people getting in touch and sharing their stories
and we talk about tech,
but we also talk about our journeys with sight loss as well.
We're very open and the conversation has really evolved
from, wow, this is a great feature,
or this is a great app,
or this is a great product,
to actually how these products are infiltrating our lives,
what they mean in our lives.
It's interesting to see how technology
has become part of our life
rather than just being some geeky thing.
Everyone uses it, we're all talking tech,
you know, in one way or another.
Exactly, and that's why I thought
it would be so great to have you here
because I think we both probably love
our apps and gadgets a bit too much,
but not everybody feels that way.
And yet, technology is essential in so many ways
and can do things beyond just being fun to play with.
It actually does affect our daily lives
in some pretty significant ways.
So I thought that we would share,
maybe it's our favorite technology,
or just something that, you know,
we feel like people should know about.
The first category that we have
is just in general health and wellness.
Do you have a favorite app or gadget
that kind of fits into this category
that really has affected you in some way just in daily life?
I'm a, you might say, a traditional Scottish man,
in the sense that, you know,
feelings are to be suppressed
and never to be brought out in public.
These days though, thankfully that's changed.
I did find an app and I think it's a fantastic app.
I always get ridiculed for how I say it, but it's Calm.
C-A-L-M, Calm.
Some people say it's Calm.
I don't know how you're supposed to say it,
but I say it as Calm.
It is such a wonderful app
because it kind of gives you two options, really.
You can have stories read to you at night.
I did go through a bit of anxiety,
especially during the pandemic.
Getting to sleep at night was a challenge.
I know for a lot of blind people, sleep is a real problem,
and for me it was a case of, right,
well, I need to try and find a way of dealing with this.
And I found this app is wonderful
because they're just stories told to you
in a very soft, relaxing, calm way.
I'm able to fall asleep to that
and it was really, really pleasant.
You've also got the sound effects.
A lot of people love noise for a lot of different reasons,
and actually it's important to say,
and I think that the pandemic
certainly brought this out in people.
People who lived alone would actually go on
to things like YouTube and find sounds of an office,
or sounds of a cafe, or you know,
something to make them feel
like they were actually somewhere.
This really matters to people
and I think we should never shy from it
because it's important that we feel connected
to the world in some way.
And ironically, I think as much as technology does connect,
it also isolates us.
I think sometimes these apps
can bridge that gap a little bit.
It's not obviously the same as human contact,
but it's not bad,
especially when you're on a lockdown and you've no choice.
Okay, so Calm, I'm definitely going to
check this out.
And I think one thing that has been problematic for me
when it comes to like, mindfulness apps and such,
is that a lot of them tend to not be really user friendly.
And so here I am trying to relax and by the end of it
I wanna throw the phone across the room.
So it's nice to know that there is an app
not only that has really good content,
but that's usable as well
without raising your blood pressure.
My, it's sort of an app and a gadget
for this health and wellness category,
and it initially feels like one of those things
that's really frivolous.
Like, really?
You need technology to do this particular thing?
And turns out, yeah, it actually has helped.
So, my device is a smart water bottle of all things.
It's called Hidrate but it's spelled with an I.
So H-I-D, Hidrate.
The way that it works is it's a nice metal bottle
so it will maintain the temperature
of whatever you put in it.
It has an area on the bottom of the bottle
that you tap against your smartphone
when you have finished drinking the water inside
and it automatically tracks it for you.
The app also will send reminders
if you haven't had anything in a while,
or you haven't tapped that area on the bottle in a bit,
it will remind you to, hey,
you might wanna drink some water.
And it has these clever little sayings,
so it's not just, go drink stuff.
It's kind of funny, kind of clever sayings
to encourage you to do that.
And I've found it helpful because I like drinking water.
I don't mind it, but it's so easy to get distracted
and, oh, I've been at my desk for four hours,
and suddenly I'm just exhausted.
And oh, you know what?
I didn't drink water all morning, let's do that.
It's, you know, just a nice water bottle on its own.
And then to have the added benefit
that I can look at the end of the day,
see how much water I've had,
and be reminded when maybe I'm falling down
on the job a bit.
It's been cool.
All right, so how about,
so this particular category is just around the house,
so pick a room, any room,
tell me about a piece of technology
that has really helped you just generally in the home.
This is a difficult one because gadget wise,
I mean, I could pick from a range.
I could say, well,
it's the smart bulbs that make a difference in my home.
My wife and I are both visually impaired
and I need as little light as possible
and she needs as much light as possible.
And having the ability
to just tell the old Amazon Echo over here,
I can tell her to, you know,
switch it to my profile or to switch it to suit me,
you know, set Steven's lights and set my wife's lights,
and it really does help because then she can come in,
she can have the lights anyway she wants per room.
I can do the same. So, that's really cool.
I have to say though, there's one thing I've been using
a lot of more recently.
I mean, I've been paying for the service,
I've been paying for it for months,
haven't used it.
And now I am using it and that is Aira.
And I'm using that a lot at home,
and I know a lot of people use it outside
for lots of different things, for navigation,
and for finding your way if you get lost,
brilliant for all of that.
But at home, a lot of the tasks I struggle with at home,
and it's on my computer if I'm honest.
On my computer, I have a lot of,
you know, sometimes I need to go and download an app,
and I maybe get as far as the software download page
and then I'm lost.
So you're thinking, okay, how am I gonna find this?
You just get Aira on the call, they jump on on TeamViewer,
and they just fix it and they tell you what they're doing
and they go through the whole process.
And you know, one situation where I had an app downloaded,
I managed to get the app downloaded
and the the agent said,
would you like me to install it for you?
I said, that would be great.
And then we went through the install
and then she read through the entire application feature set
and it just kind of brought a lot of things to life.
You know, if we download something or we use something,
we maybe use that bit of it we need.
But we never really venture beyond that
because we weren't aware it was there.
We maybe don't have the brain space to be able
to go through it all and learn it all.
And just a brief description,
if you haven't heard of Aira,
it's wonderful and you should check it out.
So it is a visual interpreter service
where you can call someone
who can either connect to your computer
or use the camera in your smartphone
and assist in accomplishing tasks
that require some sort of visual input.
So maybe it is looking at your computer screen
as we've talked about here,
or maybe it is, I have dropped something on the floor,
and I have no idea where it went.
I just need that pair of eyeballs
to look around and find it.
And I have to completely agree with you both
in using Aira for computer tasks,
and you know, for a lot of other things
that I can accomplish if I spend the time to do it.
But I think I've just come to the point
where I recognize that my time is valuable
just as anyone else's is.
And would I rather spend that time
fighting with an inaccessible app,
or trying to figure out the buttons
on this new gadget on my own,
or would I like to really be more efficient about it,
call someone up, have them describe this to me,
and complete the task rather than spending
a lot of time fighting with it.
This is where our conversation often
goes on our podcast.
We often talk about this,
and how it's about having control
but not giving up all of the control.
It's the middle ground.
Now an example of this was,
I bought for myself and for my mother a humidifier
and I often sometimes wake up coughing,
I have terrible dry eyes.
Now this thing arrives from Amazon,
it's there and here we are,
and I opened up the box and all these bits fall out.
And there's that moment of dread, you're thinking,
how does this work?
And I don't know, do you ever get this
where you just sometimes sit there thinking,
this is just gonna go back in the box,
and we're just gonna forget this ever happened.
But actually again, Aira.
I get them on the call and I say, look,
I wanna set this up and use it.
They're often loading the manual, they're looking it up,
they're figuring out how to do it.
Okay so take this part, this feels like this,
and grab this and put this together.
And the the best thing about that
was when I take the other box,
which is my mom's one, right into her house,
she has no idea what to do with it.
I said, don't worry, I'll do it.
So it's completely empowering, you know?
It's like, so not only have I learned how to do it myself,
I'm able to help other people,
and then so no longer is it, can you do it?
I'll do it for you.
Yes, I love this discussion
because I think we all struggle with
what does independence mean, and you know,
for some people if they've had vision
and they're losing it,
not only do I have to do everything myself,
but I have to do it in the same way that I did before.
Even if it takes, you know, eight times as long.
The way to look at this is,
it's many doors, but they all lead to the same room,
and you're just taking a different door.
That's it. That's all you're doing.
You learn this.
This is just a different way in to the same place.
Yeah, exactly.
So, my gadget is one of those things that I went
for years and years and years without having.
It's a small thing,
but it's a really important thing.
So, a thermostat.
Keeping the room the temperature that I want it
and knowing if someone else has changed it
and being able to say, oh, that's the temperature, is it?
Well, let's change that back.
And I have a Nest.
There are other smart thermostats as well,
but going from a thermostat that was,
you could adjust it manually,
but it was like this little slider on the side,
and you might push it just the tiniest bit
and suddenly you've gone four degrees, or not at all,
and you never knew which one.
So with the Nest and other smart thermostats,
I'm able to control it from a smartphone app.
These smart thermostats can work with assistants as well.
We have Google Home in my case
and you're able to ask the current temperature,
the current humidity, switch from heat to cool,
and do all of those fun things
that I think most people take for granted.
So, I couldn't live without my thermostat.
Once we have our environment all set up
where we're nice and warm and comfortable and all of that,
it's time to relax and get into some entertainment.
So, what kind of thing,
and I'm sure it's hard to choose one single thing.
It was for me, but what single thing entertainment wise
could you just not live without?
Again, one thing is so difficult to say, right?
Because some of them are all connected, I guess.
I mean, in terms of entertainment, I do like good audio,
and funnily enough, I actually started using,
just maybe in the last few months again,
my, as I call them, the HomePod Big.
Because you have a HomePod Mini now.
So yeah, the HomePod Mini which does exist,
but the HomePod Big, which is now discontinued,
the original HomePod as some might say,
the sound off these things is incredible.
I wish they still sold them.
I have a hunch something is coming
that will fuse together Apple TV and the Apple HomePod.
For me, it's good sound.
So I think good speakers like that are good.
The one thing I can't live without,
and it's a very UK thing so I apologize Ricky,
but my satellite box,
which is now you have it, I believe is Comcast.
Comcast I believe were one of the first companies
to come out with an accessible set
to a box I believe in the states.
Well, Comcast owns Sky TV here in the UK
and they have brought the learning from Comcast to the UK
and the Sky boxes we have here.
So Sky satellite television set top box,
which was generally inaccessible for a long time
and now it has voice guidance,
it has obviously got audio description.
The one thing it doesn't have at the moment
is any kind of on-demand option for content.
That's a bit of a nuisance at the moment,
but I believe that's being worked on.
But the fact is now I can control the box entirely on my own
and that's the first time that's been possible
and that only came in last year.
I feel like I can utilize the massive subscription cost
I pay for that service per month.
Whereas before I couldn't.
So I don't know if I'd go quite so far to say
I couldn't live without it.
I probably could if I'm honest.
But I do like TV, I do like watching film,
but it's getting access to what's available
and there's even, for example,
an option where you can use the voice remote
and you can ask it to show you every single thing
on there that's got audio description.
Everything that's coming up, everything that's available.
So, that is really good.
And it actually plays really well into
what mine is.
My device that I wanna talk about is an Amazon device.
It is the Amazon Fire Stick.
So the Amazon Fire Stick,
it is a way that you can use multiple services
that you connect to this tiny little device
that plugs into your TV from this one device
and this nice, tactile remote.
It's nice, tactile remote.
It also has a lady integration
so you can speak to it and search for certain things.
And all of your services, like again,
Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video,
even things like HBO Max and other streaming services
that you might have a subscription to,
you're able to access them all
from this single device which speaks
and also has some low vision features on it.
And so you're able to navigate,
find the things that you wanna watch,
and then enable audio description for them.
And of course you have to, unfortunately,
enable audio description on each service.
I wish there were a switch that says anything I play,
if there's audio description, give it to me.
But sadly, there is not yet.
The cost is fantastic
and I like that I can do so much from it.
Even if I just had the device
and Amazon Prime Video and YouTube,
it would still be worth it.
So the final category that we have
is just the miscellaneous category.
If there is a thing that you have been dying
to mention from any category
that maybe a lot of people don't know about.
The problem is that technology companies,
everything has become so simplified,
I mean, if you were wanting to buy a product today,
but if you actually think about it,
there's not as many products available.
Everything's kind of eaten everything else.
I mean the iPhone killed off
so many different devices and gadgets
and I think about an app I use called Voice Dream Scanner.
You know, I can get an app that costs me eight pounds
on an iPhone I already have.
It just works.
I can grab documents,
I can instantly read text off the document,
select that text, use it.
A good example was recently I had to use it for my passport.
So I scanned the passport with Voice Dream Scanner
and I was instantly able to get my passport number,
and so you can just grab the text from the iPhone,
you can copy it and then you can paste it straight into
the form field I needed to paste it into on my Mac.
When you just think about that, it's so cool.
I mean I think for me,
in terms of the product and the ecosystem,
I'm kind of all in on the Mac world.
The one that I guess I've used most recently that is,
because I like keyboard.
I'm a bit of a keyboard obsessive, Ricky, right?
I have so many keyboards.
My favorite keyboard,
if I was to recommend a keyboard to anyone,
I recommend the Logitech MX Keys.
Now this is a keyboard which has got
such great, tactile response to it.
It's not a mechanical keyboard,
so you need something fairly quiet.
These are, but again, good key travel on these keys.
And also each key has, you know,
a bit of a recess in it
so you can actually feel your fingers slide into the key
a little bit before you type.
So, a really nice, kind of circle recess that every key has.
This has stuck with me for a long time
and even though I've tried different keyboards,
I've never wanted to let this one go
because I love the recessed keys.
I love the key travel.
I love the fact that you can have three devices
connected to it.
So I can switch between my iPhone, my iMac,
and my MacBook easily just with a simple key press.
I could do this with my Apple TV if I wanted,
I could use my PC that way.
It's all by Bluetooth.
You do get as well, which is kind of handy,
a little dongle as well that comes with it.
And that's handy for say a PC
that doesn't have Bluetooth in it.
You can hook it straight into that.
It's just a lovely keyboard,
and it's got backlight on it if you need that,
if that's useful to you.
And it is a full-sized keyboard.
It's got your num pad on there,
it's got proper size cuffs or keys.
It's just a really nice keyboard
and I think it's one of the ones that I've found
that is well-built, it's solid, powered by USBC.
So you can charge it up and it'll give you,
I mean, I use it a lot, so I charge mine quite a lot.
But you can get a good few weeks out of it
without having to charge it.
But I will say one thing,
and it's like all these things,
the software that comes with it to control it
is pretty naff.
But the only reason I would use the software
and there are some reasons you might want to,
for example, it does have an additional,
above the number pad there are four extra function keys
that you can assign to anything you want.
But you have to get some support to do that
because it's not accessible through the app.
And the other function
that some people use the app for
is to convert the function keys
or the function row to be function rows
like F1 to F12 as opposed to the media keys.
Here's the pro tip,
you don't need to have the software for that
because if you just,
and this is the case for most keyboards now,
if you hold down function and escape,
that will convert that for you.
Now it doesn't work on all systems
but most systems will let you do that even on a laptop.
If you want to ever lock those function keys in,
hold down function, press escape once,
and that usually function locks the keys
so that you're able to use them as F1 to F12.
Oh wow, that's super useful.
My most useful or can't-live-without gadget is interesting
because there are very few blindness-specific things
that I use anymore,
because there are so many mainstream options
that are usable by everyone,
including people who are blind or low vision.
There's one though that mainstream I guess
hasn't had a reason to crack
and that is color identification.
So there are ways, of course,
that you can mark your clothing once it has been identified
and you can put in labels for things,
and actually some really great solutions for that,
including Way-Around tags that you can use with your phone,
where you write your own description
of whatever you're tagging,
be it clothing or something else.
But this is a standalone device.
It's very small, it is called the Color Star.
And the thing that I like about it
is that you can tell what color something is
and it's actually really, really accurate.
And you can also run this device across your clothing
and if there's a pattern,
that pattern is going to be detected
and you'll hear different audible tones
depending on whether there is a different color
or a change in the material.
So sometimes you may place this device on something
and it says it's bright green,
and you think, okay, I know what color that is,
except that it turns out, you know,
it's this nice floral shirt
that has multiple colors in it.
And the Color Star will tell you about those things
if you're interested.
One thing that it does do that's beyond just,
hey, I wanna know what color my clothes are,
or even, is my fruit turning a different color?
You know, you can put it against anything.
But one thing that it does that can be useful is
what color is the light that I'm pointing at?
So sometimes you may have lights on a gadget,
a cable modem, or something or other,
and when you call tech support, they're like,
is the red light on?
With this you can point it at a light
and determine the color of that light.
So, I'm pretty picky about buying things
that are blindness-specific
because I found that so many mainstream items
can do things just as well, if not better.
But there are instances where it makes sense
to have something built for blind and low vision people.
And this is an example of that.
I really love the Color Star.
You actually made me think about this
because I've heard this situation so many times.
I'm colorblind, so even though I can see a little bit,
and I can certainly see light to some degree,
I couldn't tell you what color it is,
what color it should be.
I wouldn't have a clue.
But yeah, it does make it very difficult to identify colors,
or they've all merged into one.
We actually had a guy get in touch with us on the podcast
who talked about a very similar,
well, not similar product, but a similar thing.
He was talking about identifying food labels
and he talked about a product called the ID Mate,
which is now discontinued I believe.
And that was the thing, right,
because it was such a good product
and he demonstrated it for us.
And I was on eBay trying to find one secondhand
thinking this must be available somewhere
because it's such a good product.
And I think you're right,
there are some instances where specialist wins,
but it is a case of the iPhone is out to eat them all.
It's like the Pac-Man of gadgets, you know,
it's off eating them all up.
That's the the reality of where we are now, right?
Everything's becoming an app.
For some reason, as good as these cameras are,
they can't seem to get color right.
Everything is either gray or brown.
It's all lighting, isn't it?
It's all to do with the lighting, and you know,
these other devices obviously are able to handle that.
And that's where they stand out.
Exactly. They emit their own lights.
So you're holding it against this thing
and no additional light is getting in,
which is nice because you don't have to think about,
oh, are the lights on?
Is my hand creating a shadow?
And just things that you might not ever think about
that turn out to be important
for accomplishing the task at hand.
There's always tools for the job, I feel,
and that's the case with when I mentioned Aira.
And it's interesting, I use the tool relevant to the need.
And I think it's just often,
and it's like when you're out and about,
you know, you may,
one app I love as well,
just to mention briefly is Soundscape,
which is an incredibly good app.
And for people who don't know,
Soundscape is a brilliant app.
Essentially, it's like an ability to some degree,
if you're trying to say find the bank
and you want to know where it is,
you just put the location in
and you'll get an audible beep from the direction
of where that bank is.
And obviously it doesn't solve the last 10-yard problem
that we always have finding the door,
or finding the specific thing.
But it gets you in the right area
and it obviously gets you to a location, which is key.
We just need to get technology a little bit better
to be able to identify, for example,
if it's a cash machine or it's an an open door
we're trying to find that it could help us with that.
But it's definitely improving and technology is good.
I say to people, get a smartphone, your life will change.
Most people who tell me
they don't ever wanna use a smartphone,
and I've heard it from a lot of people,
once they do it, once they actually get into it,
their life changes.
Oh, I so agree.
It can feel really, really overwhelming
for a number of reasons.
And it's important to recognize
that there is that learning curve,
but it's also important to recognize
that on the other side of all that learning
is just a whole host of possibilities
that you never thought about before.
And look, I know there are people who
can't use it
for many different reasons, for motor issues,
for people who've got certain disabilities,
absolutely that is not gonna be the product for you.
But for people who are just not doing it
because they just don't wanna put the work in,
I think you're actually causing yourself
more work in the long run.
This could actually make our lives easier
and to access the world we live in,
we have to be part of it, right?
And this is part of it now.
This is how technology is going.
Smartphones are not gonna disappear.
The Nokia 3310 is not gonna make a massive comeback.
Well, Steven, I think that we could talk all day
and have a thoroughly enjoyable time doing so.
But I think we should wrap up for now.
You said this is 30 minutes.
I don't know how you can handle this.
I love podcasts because they don't restrict me on time.
I love it.
Well, thank you so much for stopping by
and perhaps this is the first of many.
I appreciate you sharing all the great info
and just sharing some of your insight and your experiences.
It's been great.
Oh, it's been great, Ricky.
Thank you so much for letting me on.
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