-: 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 for having these devices in your house
that can be connected and controlled with a smartphone
or a voice assistant?
In this episode, Steven Scott
of the Double Tap Podcast joins us
as we share personal experiences
and opinions on using smart devices.
I'm Ricky Enger, and this is Hadley Presents.
Welcome to the show, Steven.
-: Hey, Ricky, lovely to be back.
-: It is wonderful to have you back
and we always have a fantastic time.
I suspect today will be no different.
We're gonna have a lot
of fun talking about smart homes today.
I am 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?
-: Well, that's very kind. I'm sure it's more than
that, but yes.
I'm Stephen 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 every an hour, every day.
We don't expect you to keep up with that,
but you, you are welcome to pick
and choose whatever you like and come along for the tech.
But you know, what you can expect is a lot
of interesting conversation
between two blind guys talking about how we navigate life
as blind people as well as the technology we use.
-: 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 like Google
or Siri or Amazon's device, Alexa.
We tend to call that one the A lady or lady a
'cause she's always listening for her name
and then she thinks we're talking about her
and talking to her.
But anyway, yeah. What devices do you have in this category?
-: Well, it's interesting. A lot of people think
because I'm into my tech, that my home is absolutely buzzing
with technology in, in every corner.
And it, 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, you know, isn't as techie
and wants to be able to use the technology as well.
And so I have to think about,
and it's important actually when I'm doing it,
and it helps me when I'm doing the show
because I think okay is, you know,
I might get excited about the latest, greatest thing,
but is she gonna find this interesting?
Is she going to enjoy this? Is she gonna want to use it?
Is she gonna be able to understand to use it?
It needs to be simple, it needs to be uncomplicated.
Not because, you know, she's incapable of learning all this
or doing it, it's just that she doesn't,
she's not as techy as I am.
You know, she's not into it in the same way. Yeah.
And so she just wants to, you know, press a button
and the 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, it's about compatibility with everyone in the home.
It's also about something that's 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, you 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, you know?
So, so I I, I have the standard, if you like, smart speaker
as I would refer to her as Lady A
and so, you know, we, we all started, you know, 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
because I was explaining to her like, you just talk to it,
just ask it a question, ask it to play your favorite song.
And it did and she was blown away.
-: And I think that's the key, right?
Is that it's, it feels natural.
-: I think it is. And I think it's also when you show someone
a tool like this,
because look, I, I get very excited about lots
of different tech and you know,
I can hear my wife's eyes rolling
because she's like, yeah, whatever.
And you know, even friends of mine will say, yeah,
but is that really a big deal?
Does that matter? And so, you know,
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, you know, 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 I I, 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 you know, what about, what about someone who's 85,
you know, 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 and technology, right? Exactly.
-: Yes. -: It's not about age.
All right, it's about understanding, it's about willingness.
Some people just don't care, some people don't want to.
-: Yeah, it's a mindset.
-: Absolutely. And so what you have
to do if you really wanna engage someone
and 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 I focused in 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 couldn't care less. And that's the key.
It's getting someone hooked in 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
that 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?
Does it, has it got matter support?
And you think, what does that mean?
What, 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.
-: Yeah, right. -: And
that makes a big difference in my buying decisions.
-: 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 wanna 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,
the least prevalent in our home,
but we do have a doorbell camera
and I think you do as well. Is that right?
-: Yeah. And again, I went, 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.
Now, 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 you know, it, it seems to be a pretty accessible app.
Strangely it's a little bit more accessible than Ring is,
which is interesting.
'cause Ring's a more expensive version. Yeah,
-: Yeah.
So I, I just wanna 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,
in my experience.
Is that true for you as well?
-: Yeah, I, 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 you know, in this case with the Amazon Skill store,
you can actually just get for free.
They don't cost any money at all.
I think they have brought in some
that cost, but not, 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.
So 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, you know, 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, Yeah, it'll just go off.
So I call a lady and you know, I can go into the app store
and, and I can obviously find it there
and I can en 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, as a bell.
So when someone presses the ring doorbell,
suddenly on my Echo it will say,
Bing bong the summit 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 to chime is really useful
because it saves you having to have your phone on,
on you know, loud all the time.
The biggest reason for having one of these devices is so
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, is a little bit nervous,
especially at night if someone knocks on your door
and you know, we'll talk about some
of the cool things we'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,
it 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 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, is possibly one of the best features of
that particular combination.
-: 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 other device
categories
and reasons that you might have smart
devices in this category.
So for whatever reason, mine tend to be devices
that shouldn't have touch screens,
but do so if I want to turn on my oven
or use my dishwasher, you know,
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?
So these sort of kitchen appliances that are smart?
-: You know, 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, you know, if you don't need to replace them, why?
And and honestly they were the kind of devices
that you could put a bump on, on a button
and you could quite easily set it up and,
and you know, with a washing machine for example,
it's the same setting I'm using every time I have a
bump on that is set.
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 the door
and off it goes and starts its thing.
I'll be honest, and this is kind
of why you talk about the smart devices 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,
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 excessively
as 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,
be 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 touch screen you talk 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 are buying a new device,
if you're buying a new appliance,
the geeks let me will tell you go buy
the latest smart thing.
Actually sometimes the simpler option is A,
the cheaper option, and B, 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 may be all you need.
And so if that is the case, just do that, get a bump on,
you know, put it on the, the 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 you know, talking air fryers are starting
to become a thing, but you know, there's
so few and far between.
We 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.
We can, it might work today,
but one update who'd come along into that app and
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, you know,
it doesn't necessarily mean that it's better.
-: 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?
So again, pressing that ten second
or 32nd button on the microwave, can I still use this
or has it for all intents
and purposes become a brick to me become.
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 Kari,
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 KRI updating, but now you have to find
and press a start button in order to get that going.
-: You see, this is why I quite like the lead ea being the
hub because ultimately what I think about when,
when it comes to accessibility is, you know,
you want something that is fairly untouchable.
So, and nothing is untouchable, 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 I, 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 Philip Hue.
Now Philips Hue 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 you know, for a lot of blind people it's lighting is
important, really important, especially for low vision.
You know, people who are, 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. I'm 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
of a dark evening, the lights just would come on.
You know, I just wanted the lights to come on
and there's lots of solutions for this.
And these days, you know, you, you can't turn
around without falling over some motion activated
light somewhere.
But often these lights that you can buy are,
you know, they stick onto the wall.
You've probably heard about adverts, you know, on Facebook
or you know, 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,
in the ceiling in my case, little spotlight bulbs.
And I wanted those to be able to be, you know, just
to 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,
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,
the roof as normal, they're just,
even if they're smart lights, they're exactly
the same as any other light.
They don't use up anymore energy.
In fact, because they're LED they use less so they're,
they're cheaper than the halogen spotlight bulbs
of old i I should say as well.
You have a little device that you connect to the internet
and you connect this box to it called a 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,
of the brain, of the whole, the whole thing.
And you download the Philip Hue app onto your smartphone
and you go through the process of adding the lights.
That's a, a bit of a boring procedure
because you gotta 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, you know, turning it on
and off on the app and you would see if,
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, you know, 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, well, 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 wanna 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 say that I realize it,
this is a time sensitive thing.
You, 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 with your,
an iPhone or Android and navigate around the app
and set it all up and essentially build your smart home
within the Philips 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 Philips 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 the 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, 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 the lady a in my case makes it
smart, but makes it usable.
You know, accessibility is one thing,
but usability is another.
And that's the key for me, building both.
-: Absolutely, yeah, you've gotta 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 gonna be wishing for that light switch.
-: Yes. And that's the other thing as well.
Now you mentioned that at the top about, you know, you you,
you have guests coming over and they turn the lights off
and the immediate thinking is,
that's gonna destroy my smart lights
because you've SunEd 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 you know, the default is that it would change it to be,
you know, turn the, the light on it will
respond and turn all the lights on.
And again, you could just see at that point,
turn the lights off and it would do so.
So, you know, it doesn't forget anything.
I, 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, it's a really good system.
-: 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
for 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 gonna stick with that.
So I know at least that much now
because they're 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, 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 gonna work, gotta return that.
-: Yeah, and that's, that's a really good question
because this is often the biggest challenge in our world is,
you know, 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.
Yeah, right. And you know, we do try and, and
and we be a resource that's what we are for, right?
We're here to, to be, not just to talk about this stuff,
but invite you as 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 from microwaves, from the, the cheapest
to the most expensive and the smartest.
And that's really what it's about.
It's about just, you know, being a place
where people can come and get the information.
And we've try and, and,
and create that information for you as well via our website,
double tap on air.com.
So, you know, do check it out
because I think you, 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.
You know, ultimately what I would 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 is start with
what you need to do.
Lighting is a good one, it's a good one to think about.
I, I've had many blind people ask me, Ricky, this question,
why is a blind person,
do I even care if the lights are on or off?
And 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 wanna know those lights are off.
Now these smart lights can turn themselves
off at 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, and that is a way of knowing my lights are off.
So it can actually work towards saving you money as well.
And it it also be useful if you're not in your home.
You can, you know, 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, you know, lights on
and off when we were on holiday.
Of course these days we just use our smart lights for that.
-: 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, a nice place to start.
And certainly reaching out
to the community in Double Tap is a great example of
learn 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, Stephen.
It's always great to have you stopping by.
Always very informative and hope to have you again sometime.
We haven't scared you away yet, so No, not
-: At all. You know, you never will.
-: Excellent. -: Thank you Ricky.
-: Thanks so much. Got something to say?
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