Sight and Sound Technology Podcast

The very popular and much beloved Sight Village Assistive Technology exhibition is turning 30 this year. The event, which started its life on the Queen Alexandra College campus has evolved to be a major event and is a firm favourite in the calendars of blind and low vision users of assistive technology, as well as a host of assistive technology companies and charities providing services for people with sight loss. This year, Sight Village returns to the East Side rooms in Birmingham, for two days, on Monday 8th and Tuesday 9th of July. To celebrate its 30th birthday, the event will also include an evening of entertainment and a very special Sight Village Assistive Technology museum. Stuart is joined by Paul Hopkins and Rose Woodall from Queen Alexandra College to give us all the details.

The Sight and Sound team are fresh back from the world renowned Sight City Assistive Technology show, which takes place annually in Frankfurt. This episode is all about glimpsing at some new technology, which will shortly enter our product line. We'll hear from Orbit Research, Harpo, Paige Connect, Next VPU and WeWalk. And, if that wasn't enough, there are some promotions on some of the technology featured in this episode that you will not want to miss out on!

Forrest Yoga is renowned globally as a powerfully physical, internally focused Ceremonial yoga practice that emphasizes how to carry a transformative experience from the yoga mat into daily life. On this very special and very different episode of our podcast, Stuart is joined by Sight and Sound Technology's Sharon Lyons, who took a month away from her life and work to go to Barcelona to become a Forrest yoga practitioner.

Welcome into another episode of the Sight and Sound Technology podcast. Today's episode is all about an exciting new addition to our portfolio called SpeakSee. Speaksee is the first microphone system able to accurately transcribe group conversations. In addition, Speaksee shows what's being said in different colors for each person, In less than a second. Each speaker can have their own name corresponding with the microphone they are wearing. In this way a Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing person can distinguish who says what. This new and very exciting technology aims to make conversations accessible for all. Joining Stuart on the show is Adam Lee, Business Development Manager with SpeakSee in the UK to tell us more.

We're hugely excited at present as the Braille eMotion, the latest refreshable Braille display from selvas Healthcare in South Korea enters our portfolio. But this is much more than just a Braille display, as Jenny Axler from Selvas Healthcare tells us when she sits down with Stuart for a chat.

The 39th CSUN Assistive Technology Conference AND EXHIBITION in Anaheim, California, hosted by the Centre on Disabilities, Division of Student Affairs at California State University, Northridge, has just concluded for another year. Sight and Sound Technology's Stefanie Davies was on the ground in California and joins Stuart to talk about the event.

World Optometry Week takes place this year from 17th to 24th March. The 2024 theme is all about advancing Optometry's Commitment to Global Eye Care. To mark World Optometry week, Stuart meets Sarah Arnold, who has worked as an optomitrist for the last 30 years, and who is herself visually impaired.

On this episode Stuart meets the insporational 16-year-old Nathon Proudfoot, who has invented his very own low vision device called the nathon 14. We also have information about a very interesting webinar hosted by the UK Association for Accessible Formats (UKAAF) on March 21st.

The popular Sight Village assistive technology show is kicking off for 2024 by visiting Blackpool on Tuesday 9th April, at the Winter Gardens, from 09:30 am to 3:30 pm. Stuart is joined by Rose Woodall from QAC to give us all the details.

Welcome to the 80th episode of our podcast, which coincidentally enough marks our Christmas 2023 programme. Speaking of Christmas, you may not be aware that Santa has some amazing offers on a range of hardware from our partners in Kapsys, Envision, WeWalk, Vispero and Hims, and Stuart has all the details. We report from a recent Employer Engagement event, held in Dublin, by Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind, who have been running the Employment Vision project for the last two years. The project, supported by funding from Pobal, aims to support people with sight loss to gain employment and build confidence and aims to show employers that people with impaired vision are an untapped pool of talent ready to make a difference! We hope you enjoy our final show of 2023, and we look forward to our return in January.

The Cadence tablet from Tactile Engineering is a pocket-sized device (about the size of a large mobile phone) with 48 cells of 8-dot refreshable Braille, in four lines of 12 cells each. Connecting four tablets into a desktop quartet provides eight lines of 24 cells each. The tablet features Perkins keys, a directional pad for navigation and control, and seven multi-use keys for selecting lines, accessing labels and menus, highlighting objects, and more. Joe Said from Tactile Engineering recently visited our head office in Northampton and Stuart took the opportunity to sit down with him and learn more.

The ever popular Sight Village South-East event is returning to Kensington Town Hall on Tuesday 7th November. Doors open at 10:00 am and the event runs until 5:00 pm. Stuart is joined by Paul Hopkins and Rose Woodall from QAC to tell us all about it.

We're delighted to mark National Braille week by having a reflective chat with Matthew Horspool. Matthew’s career started in a school for the blind, where he worked as a Braille transcriber and teacher of technical Braille codes. He has been formally involved with the Braillists Foundation since it was registered as a charity in 2020 and took up the post of General Manager in 2021. He is also Braille Subject Lead for the UK Association for Accessible Formats and has recently been appointed as Code Maintenance Officer with the International Council on English Braille. In his spare time, he sings in the choir at Coventry Cathedral, where Braille is invaluable to his success.

If you've ever had an idea for a feature in JAWS, Zoomtext or Fusion, this could be your big chance to shine and get your idea out there! Vispero have just launched their 'Next Big Thing' contest, running until October 16th. All you have to do is create a three-minute video presentation outlining your software feature idea. Stuart is joined on this episode by Ryan Jones, Vice President of software product management at Vispero who tells us all about it.

Paul Ryb lost his central vision in 2007, but his life changed when he gave blind tennis a go at a sports hall in Wimbledon. Last week, he was amongst a select few invited to return to Wimbledon, not to that sports hall, but to the most famous tennis court in the world, to play an exhibition match. As he prepares for the World Blind Games in Birmingham, followed by the World tennis championships in Poland, Stuart catches up with Paul to learn more about his love of tennis and his incredible journey.

We've just returned from this year's Sight Village Central event in Birmingham, and, at that event, we were delighted to unveil our new partnership with WeWALK. WeWALK aims to Enhance the mobility of visually impaired people through a revolutionary smart cane and smartphone app. The WeWALK cane detects above-ground obstacles with ultrasound while still retaining the standard white cane’s ground feedback. In this episode Stuart meets with Jean Marc Feghali, Head of Research and Innovation at WeWALK, to learn about this revolutionary mobility aid. If you want to take the WeWALK for a test-drive, then please get in touch with the office by telephone in the UK to 01604 798070.

Matthew Horspool is a familiar voice and a familiar name for his various activities in the blind and low vision community. Stuart caught up with Matthew, in his capacity as General Manager of the Braillists Foundation to find out more about the charity and the work they do.

Saima Ashraf, from Blackburn, is a senior auditor at Merseyside Police, breaking down stereotypes of what a visually impaired person can do. Stuart caught up with Saima at a very busy Sight village for a quick chat.

Since the launch of their smart glasses a couple of years ago, Envision have been changing the way that people with low or no vision see the world around them. With the recent explosion of Chat GPT and AI in general, Envision have been working hard to make sure that this new and exciting technology is at the heart of their own tools and we can already see the benefits in recent software upgrades. In another of our Sight Village Central countdown podcasts, Stuart sits down with Vanessa Vigar, Chief Marketing Officer at Envision. We talk not only about Envision, their technology, AI and the future, but we also learn a little about Vanessa and how she came to this role.

We're continuing our countdown to Sight Village Central 2023 and meeting some of the great partners that we have the pleasure of representing across the UK and Ireland. First up, Stuart is checking in with an old friend. Between releasing their new SensePlayer device earlier this year, and working on a major update to the BrailleSense 6, Selvas Healthcare, the parent company of Hims, based in South Korea are incredibly busy. Jenny Axler is back to tell Stuart what's been happening and to tell us what we can expect to find in that soon-to-come BrailleSense 6 firmware release.