Dave Williams

As only 5 percent of published matter makes it into an accessible format, inflight magazines are hardly a priority. So this piece in the Indie was fascinating to someone who does not carry an OCR system in his hand luggage every time he flies.

For anyone in the UK under the age of 40, TOTP has been a constant in our lives. After the final show due to be screened this evening on BBC Two, TOTP will be no longer.

Labels: TV

No one wants to see an error message, especially when going to read your RSS subscriptions. I have not encountered a Bloglines error message in over a year of using the service. Although today I hit the following. And whoever came up with this got it spot on as far as I was concerned. Usually I feel frustration at error messages, but this one ... hmmm ... well I thought I will just come back later, no probs. I am going soft!

"Hi,
I'm the Bloglines Plumber. Bloglines is down for a little fixer upper. We will be back shortly. Bloglines will be all better when I'm done with it.
Thanks,
The Bloglines Plumber!"

And at least my live RSS subscriptions BlogRole which you usually see below the archives over to the right of the page simply isn't there, and the JavaScript hasn't spewed error messages all over my web site. If you have to be down for any period, then do it gracefully. Good on ya Bloglines.

The following recent messages from PlusNet and Orange tell me two things:

1. They have been cutting costs and not investing in people.

2. It is probably time I voted with my wallet.

PlusNet - "Service disruption has always been there, but not in the same frequency as the last two or three months. As regards the experience that some customers have had in that period, we are truly sorry. We are determined that we will not allow this collection of circumstances to be recreated in the future."

Orange - "We have received your mail and will respond as soon as we can however, we have received a high volume of emails recently which may delay our response."

Both companies collect money through premium rate tech support lines, and Orange make further savings by outsourcing to India, charging for previously free services and discontinuing others. These are not small companies by any stretch of the imagination and recent performance is pathetic. One friend of mine has recently voted with her purse and cancelled her PlusNet subscription after PlusNet lost all her mail and did not offer anything by way of good will.

So how can they put this right. As well as fixing the technical issues, Invest in people and get some positive PR by showing they are socially responsible by doing something for the community.

Blogged about this new service from Google just the other day. El Reg has prob the most comprehensive piece I have found yet.

Interestingly though, DaveWilliams.co.uk meets the vast majority of accessibility guidelines and is XHTML 1.0 compliant. However, DaveWilliams.co.uk only makes it to position six in the results on the Accessible search page, for the phrase Dave Williams without quotes or plus signs. And performing the same search on the main Google service finds us in second place.

Welcome to a world according to Google. What more should I be doing to improve the usability of this site? I have made sure it is compliant with web standards and tested it in a number of browsers. IE, Pocket IE, Firefox, and in the default browser on Simbian S60 phones. A couple of Linux users occasionally drop by and I have not heard any complaints from them either. Dear reader I respectfully submit that this level of testing is a hell of a lot more than the majority of web sites undergo.

The Cinema Audio Description listings service from YourLocalCinema.com has been short-listed for a National Lottery Award! Making it to the finals will really help spread awareness of audio described cinema in the UK.

Please vote for Audio Description listings.

Just click the link above, type your name, select your local cinema, and click Vote Now!

The overall winners will be announced during a special BBC National Lottery television show in the autumn. Voting could help the service to secure further funding, which will help to keep it going. (Their funding runs out at Christmas!

Voting tells the Lottery board, and the UK film industry, that audio description and audio description listings really matter and should be continued.

It is a great opportunity to use the exposure to remind the film industry that
this access issue needs to be kept high on the agenda.

Thank you.

Labels: TV

I had a hard time believing the authenticity of this post. How does a marketing director allow them selvs to be reduced to this?

As someone who as been with PlusNet for 6 years or more, I am still giving my ISP the benefit of the doubt by not switching provider. But I do have serious concerns about the direction in which PlusNet has been moving. See my posts for 27 April and 17 June.

Sure everyone else is blogging about this, but no one seems to have spotted that Google is falling over itself to be politically correct, cannot make up their minds about how to refer to blind people Visually challenged? Visually impaired? For goodness sake make up your mind Google.

Yes I am sure we in blind land are expected to be falling over our selvs to thank Google for this latest offering. But to my mind this is lipservice which completely fails to address core access issues with Google's own services.

The stands and technology are all packed away, and the exhibitors have gone home following another busy Sight Village.

This morning was pretty gruelling with a steady flow of visitors to the Dolphin stand. This afternoon things calmed down and we started packing away around 4PM.

2006 has to have been one of the hottest Sight Villages on record, definitely up there with the sweltering summer of 2003 which was the last Sight Village at QAC. Housing the event continues to be a problem. Navigating around the building is challenging at best, and the standard of the food on offer is shocking for an event which is the premier exhibition of products and services for the blind. It is the eyes which do not work, not the taste buds!

Lots of mobile products at Sight Village this year many of which I discussed yesterday, along with the 1200GBP 40 cell budget braille display from RNIB.

I am very fond of the new pocket-sized Braille Connect 12 cell display manufactured by Baum and sold in English speaking markets by Humanware. I have seen this device quite a few times over the last couple of weeks in Jacksonville at the ACB convention and again this week at Sight Village in Birmingham UK. Every time I lay hands on one I am very tempted to place an order. It is not without it's shortcomings however, the braille input keys on this device have a very shallow action and would benefit from a couple of springs and being raised just a couple more millimetres. I am assured it will be supplied with a protective case, the quality of the case remains to be seen. I have heard claims that a nokia charger can be used to recharge the battery in this device, but my attempts with a couple of standard Nokia chargers failed. However the standard SuperVario Brailliant charger can be used, although mini USB charging would have been preferable.

I was definitely ready to come home after Sight Village, although probably not prepared for the stack of bills in my mail box. Council Tax in Worcester is horrific, and for what? Ho hum.

With 35 degrees C being the high in the Midlands today, most people are finding the heat and humidity horrendous. It is as hot hear in the UK as it was last week in Florida. The difference being the Americans have air con in most buildings, where as usually in the UK we do not have a need for such extravagancies.

The intense heat did not prevent hundreds of people turning out for day 2 of the 2006 Sight Village exhibition. Today as well as representing Dolphin again at Sight Village, I got the chance to lay hands on the new Braille Seika which is a budget 40 cell braille display costing just 1200GBP available in the UK from RNIB. This works out to about 30 pounds per cell which is around a third of the cost of many displays currently on the market. The display emulates the PowerBraille and so is compatible with most popular screen reading software. Personally I feel the Seika build quality lieves a lot to be desired. The unit is relatively large and heavy and the control buttons on the front edge of the unit felt slightly loose. If you are someone who likes your braille to be sharp and crisp this is not the display for you. Having said that, 1200 quid is an astonishingly low price for 40 cells of braille and hopefully products like this will shake up the industry. My only worry is that it potentially could lead to low quality product from the other manufacturers as they chase more affordable braille. Let us hope not.

Also at the RNIB stand I caught up with the developers of Talks, the first screen reader for mobile phones. I am a big fan of Talks on Simbian as it really spawned an industry of software products which provide comprehensive access to main stream mobile devices available from main stream suppliers at main stream prices. I took the free upgrade from version 2.5 to version 3 which includes: a graphic object labelling tool, automatic reading of caller ID, a user dictionary and support for more third party TTS. I am pleased to say that Talks 3 will not be available as public beta, and certainly the product installed on my Simbian phone feels like the stable and responsive real deal which we have come to expect from Talks. I would much rather the guys from nuance focused on the product rather than trying to support a massive public beta testing process. Final release expected at the end of the month.

Anyone reading my blog for some time will know I spent about a year raving about the Nokia N91 and N80 handsets which are based on Simbian S60 3rd edition. Congratulations to Nuance for being the first to provide comprehensive access to this platform. While many of us may be thinking about Windows Mobile based devices, we cannot ignore the fact that Simbian still represents over half of the Smartphone market.

As well as getting my first hands on with the N91 today, I got to check out a couple of the Nokia E series handsets which are also based on S60 3rd edition. The E60 WCDMA and WLAN capable handset, has a classic design, sleek metallic finish and feels tremendous in the hand. The E61 is basically a BlackBerry-type device targeted at frequent mobile emailers. The internal speakers on both devices are surprisingly good. After a period of seeming silence from Nuance, it is marvelous to hear the range of Talks capable devices expand to include the E series and the N series handsets.

Dolphin have announced progress on Smart Hal, which will be a complete screen reader for Windows Mobile Smartphones. This is a natural evolution of Hal from the desktop through Pocket PC/Windows mobile and soon to be Windows Mobile based smartphones. Dolphin will also be the first UK company to have developed a complete screen reader for mobile phones. The spannish company Code Factory who have been promising Windows Smartphone access for some time, are now estimating the end of the month as a possible release date for their Windows smartphone access.

For those of us with a vested interest in access to main stream mobile devices, the future is looking very bright indeed.

The temperature tomorrow is expected to be down from today around 31 degrees C. Still a tad too warm for my English sensibilities. Ah well, normality will resume shortly.

Tuesday was the first day of the 3 day Sight Village Exhibition. All the usual suspects from the assistive technology industry were out in force. And it was tremendous to catch up with some old friends as well as make some new ones.

Including yours truly Dolphin had a good sized team on the ground, all describing and demonstrating our range of access and alt format products to enthusiastic audiences.

Sight Village is a valuable opportunity for the industry to benefit from a diverse range of user perspectives, and it is also a chance for the people who support the industry to come and meet the companies who make it all happen. I am intrigued by the range of people who make it to Sight Village: parents, children, teachers, students, IT professionals, assistive technology advisers, home users, elderly people, and many more. As someone who enjoys meeting people, I find it fascinating to learn about the different contexts in which people are using assistive technology products and services.

Visitors to the Dolphin stand were able to take a glimpse into the future of Pocket Hal, including support for the ETI Eloquence speech synthesiser, plus an early alpha version of Pocket Hal running on a Windows SmartPhone! I believe Dolphin have been the first company to publicly demonstrate Eloquence working with a genuine pocket screen reader in the Windows Mobile environment, and the first to demonstrate a functional screen reader on a Windows Smartphone. If you know different then I would love to hear from you.

If you did not go to Sight Village on Tuesday, hopefully we will see you there on Wednesday or Thursday.

It has been a long but rewarding first day, and it is time for me to see about getting some food and sleep.

Pippity pop.

Twas the night before Sight Village, when all through the house
Not a screen reader was stirring, not a vertual mouse;

The iPods were connected to the PC with care,
In hopes that many podcasts soon would be there;

The blindies were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of USB thumbs danced in their heads;

And the people of C Sun and Closing the Gap
Not hearing of Sight Village didn't give a crap.

When out on the blogs there arose such a clatter,
When the Assistive Tech companies started to natter.

Away to MS windows I flew like a flash,
Tore open the browser and typed something ending slash.

The Daisy and the braille and the large print you know
All alt format conversions all ready to go.

When, what to my wondering ears should appear,
But a miniature PDA all mainstream not dear.

With a choice of IO drivers, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment, this content would stick.

More portable than desktops, Mobile apps they came
And they Podcast and Shoutcast and called them by name;

"Now, Real Streaming! now, MSN Messenger! now, web browsing, and Skype!
On, Word, on Excel, On and on excuse the hype!

Through the Ethernet port! through the Windows firewall!
Now blog away! blog away! blog away all!"

Following the close of exhibits on Thursday, I had time to catch up with colleagues and friends, plus observe some of the ACB convention proceedings.

Thursday evening included an interesting meal with some colleagues from the US. It was pleasant to be out of the hotel for a while, and the riverside walk west from the hotel was extremely relaxing.

Friday I spent some time observing some of the ACB business general sessions. While contracted to the council I intentionally let my membership laps for personal reasons, although I intend resuming this soon. Heh if they keep having protracted debates about the use of "chair" verses "chair person" I may choose not to rejoin. Surely there are more pressing issues to be considered?

I bid Gareth from Dolphin USA a farewell around lunch time on Friday. He has a tremendous intolerance of pretension, and as well as sharing my fondness for incongruity, he seems to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of British TV from the last 30 years.

On Friday evening I had the privilege of being invited to sit at the head table during the ACB banquet. This is an invitation I have declined in previous years, but curiosity got the better of me. It turned out there was an ulterior motive behind my invitation and I was asked to introduce some of the banquet entertainment which I was glad to do.

The banquet was followed by several drinks with several groups of friends and the partying went on until dawn.

Saturday morning consisted of a hearty breakfast, packing, a dip in the rooftop pool followed by lunch with Marlaina and Gary from Seattle who I know from my ACB Radio days.

The journey back to Worcester has not been without it's issues. Some of the assistance has been truly abysmal. Who trained ground staff that the way to treat a blind person is to grab the upper arm with both hands in a vice-like grip and drag in completely the opposite direction to the one in which the blind person needs to go? Usually I am pretty tolerant of this kind of treatment, as the only way to change this is through education rather than condemnation. Although after a 12 hour overnight journey which included minimal sleep and US Air seemingly loosing my suitcase, it's tough to remain relaxed.

I am now on the train from London to Worcester, without suitcase, US Air are getting back to me, hope to be home and veging out with a book or some TV in about 90 mins. Tomorrow back to the office, and Tuesday it is off to the Sight Village exhibition in Birmingham.

It would appear that T and T Consultancy have a Sight Village Blog for those people interested in such things.

Finally, sincere thanks to all my friends in the US who made me feel most welcome. I will be back very soon, although I may need to buy a knew suitcase first!

Click to download a brief audio update from Jacksonville including some reflections on my journey out here, as well as a brief interview with a musician.

Checked into the Hyatt Regency last night around 8PM local time. Met the manager of Dolphin US who treated me to dinner. It turns out Gareth Collins and I have a lot in common and the evening was both productive and fun, as was today at the Dolphin booth 72 in the exhibit hall.

I also managed to catch up with the ACB Radio croud for a drink, and they talked me into going on air this afternoon. Hoping to be able to link to audio archives soon.

Pocket Hal works extremely well with the Braille Connect 12 a tiny 12 cell Bluetooth Braille display from Baum, sold in the US as the Conny.

Dolphin presented to Blind Information Technology Specialists BITS this afternoon. Although we were a bit rushed as the proceeding presentation over-ran. Not to worry, I think they knew we were there, and everyone had lots of fun exploring a range of main stream PDA technology.

This evening I checked out the ACB Opening General Session which included a very moving presentation from a blind guy who escaped from the WTC on 9 11.

It has been a busy couple of days, and it is about to get much busier. I will post when I get chance.

Pip pip.

After making final preparations on Friday, there was not a great deal of time remaining for sleep before I boarded the 6:06AM train from Worcester to London. It was a fresh and bright morning in the west midlands, a pleasant change from the recent humidity and thunder storms. The train was pretty quiet at that time on a Saturday morning, and I made it into London on time.

Even with everything running like clockwork, it was going to be pretty tight to get from Paddington to Gatwick and check in before departure. I had some great assistance on this leg of the journey and hats off to London Underground staff who yet again proved their weight in gold. Same cannot be said for ground staff at Gatwick, it seems they were having a bad hair day. And we wasted 20 minutes hanging around at the wrong gate in spite of my protestations that we should double check the gate number. It had been changed. Nevertheless I boarded on time and we were in the air by quarter to eleven.

The flight from London to Charlotte was pretty uneventful apart from a child who appeared to have some kind of behavioural challenges and insisted on screaming at the top of his lungs every few minutes for most for the flight. So I slept in brief snatches.

Since leaving the UK, During the flight I made first use of Pocket Hal to start my travel expenses spreadsheet using Excel Mobile. More about Pocket Hal as the week goes on. While this is a pretty simple spreadsheet the the only calculations being currency conversions and totting up each day's expenses etc, this clearly demonstrates a practical and professional application of the product. I did not have to drag out the laptop and wait for it to boot. And using my HTC Universal, a device the size of a calculator, I was able to efficiently and accurately record expense information in a form which will be straight forward for our accounts department to process.

I am now on the ground in Charlotte waiting for my connecting flight to Jacksonville. Look forward to connecting with people from Dolphin US, and catching up with some old ACB friends.

For an international airport Charlotte seems pretty limited, no where to exchange currency, and no WiFi that I have been able to detect. So I have fallen back on GPRS. Buts it is all worth it as the girl who assisted me with the baggage reclaim was lovely!

More later.

Pip pip.

I had a quiet Worcester weekend planned. Just as well Dolphin had other ideas!!!

If you want a free limited edition squishy stress busting Dolphin, and a look at the soon to be released Pocket Hal version 7, then come and find me in the exhibit hall at the 45th convention of the American Councel of the Blind starting this weekend at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville-Riverfront hotel in Florida!

See www.dolphinusa.com for more information about Pocket Hal and Dolphin products. And visit www.acb.org for more info about the ACB convention.

Political apathy and worries about the nation's public and moral health at home, and increasing anti-American feeling abroad, are among many challenges which the US may want to face sooner rather than later.

It is not fashionable to be heard saying it in many parts, but for what it is worth, I like America and most of the Americans I have met. It is obviously the foreign policy of the Bush administration to which many foreigners and a growing number of frustrated Americans are opposed.

I have been welcome in the US on several occasions, and have made many good friends from the US. However true it may be, it is becoming a cliché to say.

"many of my friends are Americans".

Seriously though, it is a challenge to think of a country who has in the past 50 years contributed more to the world in the way of international aid, medicine, technology and entertainment. But many seem to be asking does all this come at a price? And is this apparent generosity not without self-interest?

Who was it said, there is no such thing as altruism? Me probably after a few pints!

And many of those lambasting the US are probably happy to unwittingly buy and use a vast range of American designed products and services.

The cultural and knowledge empire of the United States extends far beyond her geographic borders. But like empires of old the end will come some day. Are we starting to see a gradual fall from grace for what was in the minds of many the most influential nation of the past century?

While millions of Americans are celebrating 230 years of independence today,. I cannot help wonder What will America be like on July 4 in the year 2236?

Happy Independence Day!

I have fond memories of visiting Goonhilly for the 1999 solar eclipse. If you are someone who is fascinated by international telecommunications, then this is a must day out. Oh and having a solar eclipse thrown into the mix made it something of a no brainer. I have some text and audio which I recorded at the time and when I have a spare month to sort out all the unpacked boxes from my move, I will post it here.

Re 100Megabyt broadband, well your connection is only as fast as the slowest link between your computer and the remote system. Although my recent upgrade by PlusNet to 5megabits is going down well. Credit where credit is due. :)