Prepare yourself folks for yet another techy episode, with Shawn Kirkpatrick. Shawn is the creator of Loadstone app, quite famous app for navigation in the blind and visually impaired community. We covered a lot of things in this podcast, I have to rewind the episode myself to remember all of the topics, ; however, I can promise that it was rather entertaining conversation.

We talked about theLoadstone app itself of course, the features, how he got started, and what's next. We geeked out on other tech related ideas besides the app itself, like home automation, programming, accessibility and layer upon layer about other tech topics.

I really enjoy conversations like that, and I hope you enjoy them too...Tune in for yet another techVB episode...

Annika offers insights on the AI image captioning technology, and explains what it is, how it works, and what are the current struggles. Currently, she is doing research on image captioning for blind and vision impaired individuals at TU (Technological University Dublin)

We haven’t stop recording when we covered the basics of AI image captioning, not at all, we took deep dive in to more advanced topics like using synthetic data for neural network training, as well as result benchmarking, and way more.

This podcast is full of insights and should satisfy beginners as well as geekiest users. As far as I remember we covered way more topics than image captioning...So, tune in for the latest episode and don't forget to visit: techvb.net for more content.

In this episode I am talking withDr. Susan McKeever Senior lecturer in School of Computer Science at Technological University Dublin. The main purpose behind this episode was To answer important questions such as: What AI can do for blind and visually impaired? What are the immediate, practical applications? What problems can be solved right now? and solutions  for the future?Susan is a pro in this field without a doubt, she is supervising PhD students in practical AI research and implementation, she also teaches advanced computer science subjects. It was very insightful and interesting conversation indeed.We covered: image processing capabilities for object detection and scene recognition, current limitations, and what are improvements for the future. Susan explained innovative AI solution for enhancing navigation guidance, and explained how that can help in giving more precise information for blind and vision impaired individuals.There is plenty more interesting and insightful ideas, as well as questions and answers, that should be interesting, particularly for blind and visually impaired folks, so enjoy this rather futuristic and educational conversation.

In this podcast I am talking with Jean Marc Feghali, the R&D Lead of WeWalk. We spoke about how WeWalk is trying to help people with visual impairments navigate the world using WeWalk white cane, and how it helps to be more independent. We also talked about accessible design in general, what it means to be accessible, how to think about accessibility, and how tricky is to design a truly unique and useful product for blind or vision impaired individuals.

We discussed general accessibility, different types of sensors that could be useful for blind and visually impaired individuals when providing feedback about the environment, and way more...

Hello again folks hope you are well, it is a tutorial content this time. As a title may suggest, it is all about being better at using Google.

This post contains video as well as audio version of the same content, it is quite short, unusual for me have to say, only 11 minutes long.  In this short post you will get the following

 

What are Google search operators and why they are important.

How to use search operators to filter out the results based on the website and date.

How to combine multiple operators to further narrow the filtering in your search.

Some other search operators and my thoughts.

 

I tried to be short and sweet, straight to the point, and very practical...

 

So relax,  get comfy and enjoy the podcast…

Hello, yet another episode has arrived.  As the title suggests I am talking with the founder of Be My Eyes app Hans Jørgen Wiberg. In this podcast episode we talked about a lot of stuff, of course primarily it was about be my eyes app itself, and how it came to be.

I invited him to come to this podcast, because he created something that is absolutely free and helps thousands of blind and vision impaired individuals to be more independent, so I was curious how it happened and what's the story behind it. So, you will hear us talking about that and more of course.

 

The goal of this podcast was to answer the following questions

 

Who is the person behind the be my I's app?

How Hans come up with the idea?

How he put this idea into practical actions?

Why this app is free? And what is the business model behind it, so it is sustainable?

What issues this app is trying to solve?

How does it compare with service like Aira?

Any new features that we can expect from this app in the future?

Some interesting stories and use cases

Other people experience from the users and volunteer’s perspective

 

 

I am glad to say that I got answers to all of the questions listed above, and more. This podcast episode also contains topics that are not related with be my eyes app itself, like issues with accessibility in other areas and his personal experience in being visually impaired. We also talked about new social media phenomenon called Clubhouse, and how is that useful to blind and visually impaired individuals.

 

I always try to obtain as much information as possible about the personal experience from the person I am interviewing, and this 1 is not exception. Hans shares his personal experiences and some book recommendations Also other life related wisdom. I have to say I really enjoyed this conversation, and it was really interesting how this app became what it is right now, and what was his motives behind it. I truly think that everyone who is interested in this type of content will find something enjoyable and meaningful in this conversation.

 

There is one really amazing upcoming feature in this app that I am super excited about, but to know what it is, you have to listen for yourself...

 

So, relax, get comfy and enjoy the podcast

Hello folks, another episode from TechVB. This time is going to be a monologue recording of me talking about AI in general and what features and enhancements it will bring in the area of accessibility.

I explained what AI is, types of AI. It is more then likely not 100% accurate. I just explained my opinion based on my knowledge about AI and what accessibility improvements we can expect from it. Towards the end of the podcast, I provided some text-to-speech examples generated by artificial intelligence models in the cloud.

I have to say I really like AI capabilities thus far, and I am very positive that it will bring amazing features that are useful to blind and visually impaired individuals, knowing the fact how fast the science improves in this particular area I have no doubts that in 10 years time it will surpass our expectations.

 

So relax, get comfy and enjoy the podcast.

Hey folks, another interview this time. Joseph Lee is my guest, he's quite famous for his contributions, primarily in NVDA add-on development. I have to say this interview is a bit lengthy, just because I want to talk with him about everything I had in mind and that is screen readers, education, what is the future of accessibility, and way more.

In this podcast episode you will find out his story and how he started with programming in general, as well as how he began contributing to NVDA project.

 

Some of the other topics you will hear discussed are

What is a screen reader and the basics how it works?

The future of screen readers

How accessible is programming to the blind and visually impaired individuals

How hard is to develop add-ons for NVDA

his and mine experiences in higher education

Why it is important to learn how to advocate for accessibility

How to solve accessibility problems with software and hardware

The importance of reporting issues to developers regarding accessibility

Joseph Lee favorite apps, movies and so on

 

It is impossible to list everything we talked about, but trust me there is plenty in this interview, before I interviewed him, I set the goal to bring his experience and knowledge to this podcast so we are able to learn what he has to say regarding many questions I asked him about accessibility.

At the very endif the podcast I left an interesting audio clip that shows how did the 1st synthesizer known as VODER sounded like, it was released by Homer Dudley in 1937, That said, I bet that there is plenty information that you will find interesting...

So, get comfy and enjoy the podcast.

Another day another episode friends, this time another interview with my dear friend Greta Streimikyte.  This young woman runs a lot and does it well, as I found out for myself during the interview. Either way, we had great conversation about sports, life and leisure time. The purpose of this podcast was to bring in interesting person and just have a nice chat.

She is a professional athlete that participates in the Paralympics and other international competitions, and  I could not miss the opportunity to talk to her and ask her some questions about sports in general and particularly running.  She is visually impaired like myself so I want to bring her experience and I was keen to find out how  running on the professional level works for visually impaired person.

I am not going to spoil any more information I'm just gonna say that we discussed some interesting things.

 

So relax, get comfy and enjoy the podcast.

Hello friends, yet another episode from TechVB, another one about content sharing. At this time though it is more advanced, and even more fun then the 1st content sharing podcast. Maybe not,  I am not sure, however in this podcast you will learn how to share files between your computer and your iPhone like a boss, without using iTunes. Personally I never saw this type of tutorial presented on the iPhone, but I looked into SMB sharing and I found this app called"FE File Explorer Pro"

 

I did some googling, and I found out that this app is also available for android, I suppose I haven't done my research right because I didin't mention that on my podcast. For android users at least you will have the idea what this app does and how to set it up, because it does not differ how you set that up on Windows whether that's iOS or android.

If I have to describe the app and the purpose of it, I would say it is advanced file manager with plenty file transfer protocols available. To be honest I am using this app every day and as the title suggests it is a bit of software magic. When I found out about this app and tested all of its features, I was surprised to be honest how well it works and how fast it is. In this podcast episode you will find out how to use this app, what are its benefits, and how to set up this content sharing environment properly.

 

So as We always say, get comfy and enjoy the podcast.