Sight village 2010
I’m sitting in Birmingham airport waiting on my flight home back to Ireland after a very busy, tiring but really informative and optimistic day at sight village. Look near the bottom under the audio link for links to each interview.
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I try to attend this event every year. It’s a great way of meeting with the companies that I hear about during the year and it’s great to actually get to give their products a run for their money with hands on tests.
The companies there this year didn’t really change from last year. Very few seemed to have products that could be considered in any way innovative but none the less, it was fantastic to look at the evolution some companies products are undergoing. Take the new Apex Braille note taker from Human ware. This little thing is flat, with straight edges and all the connectivity we’ve come to expect and even demand from note takers. It’s a far cry from the days when you’d be happy with Braille and synthesized speech output.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to interview the representative from Freedom scientific Eric Damery but I spoke to him at length at the start of the day about the ongoing issues that I have had with the product that he has direct responsibility for. It was great timing for me to have the product manager for Jaws for Windows there. It gave me an actual person to speak to about the issues that I am experiencing. I’m not sure if any good will come of our discussions but at least I’m now sure that they’ve reached the top of the ladder. Read more about my perspective in relation to this conversation on my blog.
I attended the presentation from T and T consultancy again this year and Brian Hartgen gave us a run through of the great features in JTooles 3.11. We also discuss their consultancy and script writing services. It seems that T and T consultancy are definitely a company to keep in mind when looking for a solution to a jaws related problem. I’d really suggest that you give them a shout the next time you have an application that can’t be accessed using the default Jaws scripts.
I spoke to the developers of Text scout. This year, they’ve added support for new languages and they’ve increased the support for more mobile phones. I have however heard reports that the user interface for text scout leaves a lot to be desired. User feedback would be very welcome. Let us know what you think. Especially, if you have compared the KNFB reader with Text scout.
I spoke to almost every exhibiter in sight village this year. I would have loved to get more recorded interviews however time didn’t really allow for it.
As part of this years sight village, Listen And Learn Recordings decided that it would be useful to get more than just audio and text from the event. Video would add an extra and welcome demention for visitors with low vision. LALRecordings now has a Youtube Channel. Visit it today for videos from Sight village 2010 such as the demonstration of the Iveo hands on learning system. Videos on this channel will be taken with a high definition camera to allow for full screen viewing with perfect quality. STay tuned for more details in the coming weeks. The following video demonstrates the Iveo hands on learning system.
If a product was not featured in an interview but I had a chance to look at it, it will be featured in a blog post very shortly. Follow the Listen and Learn Recordings twitter account to be kept informed.
I would like to conclude by thanking Queen Alexandre college for organizing such a fantastic exhibition again this year. I would also like to sincerely thank their pupils. As always their willingness to guide people was fantastic and every one of them were more than helpful. They do a hard job every year and I always feel guilty when they have to stand there listening to people talk about things they have no interest in.
