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IN TOUCH – NIB Tech for Life Fair - Belfast

TX:Ìý 05.03.2024Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý BETH HEMMINGS

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White

We’re in Belfast’s most famous hotel, indeed it’s internationally known – The Europa.Ìý Today, it’s the site of a technology exhibition of some considerable size.Ìý With me is Jackie Brown, who is the coordinator of Technology for Life, here in Northern Ireland and this is your idea but what was the drive to get an exhibition like this over here because we’ve had things like Sight Village and so forth for, you know, 30, 40 years, what was your drive to get this done?

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Brown

The idea that there was no technology exhibition in Northern Ireland frankly horrified me, when I first moved to Northern Ireland nearly 14 years ago.Ìý So, when I joined RNIB, actually at my interview, I said to the interview panel, that if it was at all possible I would like to have a technology exhibition in Northern Ireland on a major scale.Ìý And when I was offered the job my boss said – by the way, fill your boots.Ìý And that’s what I’ve done.

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White

Right.Ìý So, we’re here, we’re right at the beginning of the exhibition.Ìý It seems to be filling up.Ìý I mean what’s your impression of what the response has been?

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Brown

The response has been more than I could ever have imagined, to be honest.Ìý All the major players in the assistive arena, they’ve all agreed to come.Ìý I’ve seen a lot of them here today already.Ìý And getting the public here, you know, we’ve done a lot of advertising, on social media, in leaflets, newsletters on RNIB’s own radio station.Ìý It’s just taken off.

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White

But it has been a bit of a challenge, hasn’t it?Ìý I mean not least because, for example, there was until about 48 hours ago, there was a bus strike, indeed a public transport strike in full scale.

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Brown

Yeah.Ìý RNIB had to put contingency plans in place and we decided that we had to spend some money on private buses to get people here because it was going to be easier to do that than cancel the whole event.

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White

What difference are you hoping this will make?

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Brown

My hope is that everybody enjoys the experience and that they want another one, they want another exhibition, whether it be next year or the year after.Ìý I’m going for next year because I don’t see why we shouldn’t have this on an annual basis and maybe perhaps it’ll become Sight Village, Northern Ireland.

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White

How hard has it been for people here in Northern Ireland to get a look at the kind of stuff which is developing so fast now, the technology?

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Brown

Yeah.Ìý Up until now it has been really difficult.Ìý RNIB’s maybe had an open day where perhaps one company has come over for the day and done some demonstrations but this is something different, this is sort of a major exhibition of all the leading players in the assistive technology arena, they’re all under the one roof.Ìý I think Northern Ireland is worthy of having this exhibition.Ìý That has always been my goal and I’m really pleased.

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White

Jackie Brown, thanks very much.

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Demonstration of accessible voting

So, what we would do is for the actual process of voting, you remove the speaker and place in a set of headphones that will give you complete privacy.Ìý You navigate your way down through the circular buttons and they align to the candidates as they appear on the ballot paper.Ìý What you do then is when you’ve listened to all the candidates you can then fold the door back, as you did originally, confirm that that’s the candidate [Thomas Briggs, Joe, 2 The Cottages…], when you’re ready you can reach up for the pencil holder and then you can mark within the confines of the marking arena.

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So, if I was to put an X here.

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Yeah please do.Ìý And when you’re happy you close the door and then nobody is aware of any preferences that you’ve marked for.

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That’s going to give people a lot more privacy.

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Complete independence as we see it.

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Tenant

I’m Tori Tenant.Ìý I’ve come up from Ballymena today which a short train ride away from Belfast, so I didn’t have too far to come.Ìý

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White

What brought you up here, why did you want to come?

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Tenant

Well, it’s always good to see what new technology’s about and just to meet up with people and experience all the different things, all the different products because technology’s changing all the time and it’s always good to be updated on what’s available.

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White

We were just eavesdropping on you looking at that new election equipment and I’m just wondering what you made of it?

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Tenant

Yes, I think it’s going to be a gamechanger because the equipment is audio based.Ìý The Pakflatt team explained how it worked and they told me in detail what each of the buttons do and each of the doors line up with the correct candidate that’s on the ballot paper.Ìý Each of the candidates are on an USB, that plugs into the device and there’s also a tutorial for first time users of it as well.Ìý So, as long as the staff are trained up on how to use it, I think it’ll make a real difference to blind and partially sighted people.

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White

I suppose the real issue is going to be, if you think it works, is are we really going to see it in every polling station in the country?

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Tenant

I would like to hope so but, obviously, that takes time and it might not happen this year but we have to keep our fingers crossed.

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White

What have been your own experiences of voting?

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Tenant

It’s been pretty mixed.Ìý Sometimes when you do go to vote you’re not quite sure if it’s going to be fully independent because you don’t know if the template’s going to be lined up correctly or if the polling officers know how to use the braille template or the tactile template.

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White

I mean it’s the first exhibition of this size, of this equipment, is it hard here in Northern Ireland to get hold of the stuff you need?

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Tenant

Well the RNIB shop in Belfast are quite good and obviously if you’re able to use the internet it’s fantastic but obviously not everybody can use the internet and I think it’s important to remember that.Ìý And also, people who are maybe newly diagnosed and don’t know what technology’s out there.Ìý So, I definitely think there needs to be more awareness raised through the likes of In Touch and the RNIB Connect Radio of what technology’s out there for people.

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White

Right, well, we’re doing our best.Ìý You have a nose round and have a good day.

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Tenant

I certainly will and I hope you have a good day too.

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White

One of the more popular spots at this tech conference is the table where you can get answers to your technological questions.

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Loughran

Hello Jason.

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Jason

Hello.

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Loughran

My name’s Siobhan Loughran.Ìý I’m registered blind, I have RP.Ìý I just got a new Z fold4 and there’s just a few wee hiccups that I just can’t iron out.Ìý For example, on the Facebook app, is there anyway to darken the text actually within apps?

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Jason

That I can check for you.

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White

Just while he’s doing that, Siobhan, you’ve obviously come along here today, what were you particularly interested in?

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Loughran

It was actually to find out about any new apps that would be helpful for visual impairment and new technology.Ìý My phone is pretty well up to date but sometimes there’s new apps that you just don’t hear about.Ìý There was one today, actually, it was doing makeup, I know a very female thing but…

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White

There’s nothing wrong with that.

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Loughran

So, being visually impaired I can’t use an ordinary mirror, I can’t see in it but using an app, you’re using the camera part, so yeah you can see your own face in the app.Ìý I can’t really understand the science behind it but it works.Ìý But it was just for every day stuff, just to make life a little bit easier.

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White

So, I mean part of thinking about this was that there hadn’t been many, or indeed any, of these kind of overall tech fairs in Northern Ireland, so is this something that you think is going to be helpful?

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Loughran

Definitely.Ìý Maybe people of my age because we’ve come up and we had pre-technology where we just had to just make things work in a different way.Ìý Now the technology’s coming up for younger people, they’re growing up with it, which is great and it’s like second nature to them.Ìý Some of us we’re having to learn the technology, you know, because we didn’t grow up with it but it’s fine.Ìý But for anybody now that would be coming up, like a younger person or whatever, this is good because all the resources are in the one place and things that you might not even think that are there you can find out about, like I found a few things today, different places that I can phone and get contacts and stuff, which I didn’t even know that existed before.Ìý

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White

It’s sort of tempting after a certain time in your life to say well, you know, I’m too old to learn that but it doesn’t sound as if that’s your attitude.

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Loughran

No, no, my attitude was I’ll just keep on going and whatever it takes to help I will try and just bring it into my life and just adapt it and that’s it.Ìý Technology is absolutely brilliant for that.Ìý Years ago, when I was diagnosed with my eye condition, there was nothing and you were just more or less left on your own.Ìý There was Guide Dogs, obviously, there’s RNIB, some OT Ìýtraining but as regards like magnifiers, talking machines, whatever, nothing.

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White

Right.Ìý We’d better see if Jason’s got a solution to your problem.

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Jason

In the settings and then you find accessibility on the left-hand side here and they’ve stuck it right down the bottom, probably because they assume that most of their customers won’t need it.Ìý Click on that, then on the right-hand side you’ve got vision enhancements, then you can sort of high contrast fonts, you tick that…

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Boylan

You literally hold the device like a highlighter pen, you point it at the page and press the trigger button.Ìý When you take your finger off the trigger button, after a second or so, it just starts reading to you. [Reading demonstration]

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I’m Tony Boylan, I work for Orcam in the UK as the sales manager.Ìý So, as you know, Orcam provide technology for people with various degrees of visual impairment.Ìý We have two types of device – one which is a handheld device, it’s primarily a reading device, you literally hold it like a pen, point it at the text you want to read, press a button and it reads the text on the page to you.Ìý We also have a wearable device, which is called a My Eye, it clips magnetically on to any pair of glasses and provides all the same reading capability.Ìý A little bit more advanced in the way you can use it, for example, things like facial recognition.Ìý So, if you looked at somebody it would say there’s either a man or a woman in front of you, you could then tell the device who that person is and the next time it sees them it will just mention them by name.

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White

I mean now though you can’t talk about this kind of equipment without mentioning AI and asking the question – where is that likely to take us?

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Boylan

Right, so, we’ve integrated AI into the latest version of our handheld product.Ìý It’s called a Read Three.Ìý You can now put it into a stand and you can put a document underneath it and the device will act as a magnifier.Ìý So, you can connect it to a screen, a laptop or a PC, and you can use it in the way you would expect a magnifier to work by making the image bigger, this is where the AI comes in because we have a feature called Just Ask.Ìý In a practical sense if you wanted to look at a utility bill, you could just slide it underneath the device and it would say – this looks like a rates bill from the borough council.Ìý And you could ask it what the total amount payable is, what the phone numbers are, how do you go about paying it or even where the council offices are.

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White

The obvious thought now is, I mean, the next generation will begin to take this kind of thing for granted but is it available to them in schools?

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Boylan

Yes it is, in fact we’ve produced a special separate version for children in primary and junior school, it’s called an Orcam Learn.Ìý It’s the same form factor as the handheld read device, that we were talking about but what it also brings to the party is the ability to listen to a student read.Ìý But in the background, it’s doing much more analytics, that the teacher or the classroom assistant can access on a portal.Ìý And now we’re measuring how many words a minute they’re reading, how many multisyllable words, all those sorts of things that a teacher has to assess.

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White

Do you have any arrangements with education authorities about this because, obviously, you know, individual parents are going to find this sort of thing difficult to afford?

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Boylan

Yes, yes.Ìý So, we’re working with a lot of independent schools and academies who are actually using this device in the classroom now.Ìý One further thing it can do, which is worth mentioning, is the AI in the device will create three context relevant questions that it asks the student.Ìý Now for older students that are perhaps at GCSE level, you can use the device as a revision tool.Ìý It gets you to scan the revision sheet and then it will generate three questions for you to answer.Ìý It’s a great example of AI in education.

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Actuality – Steven Porter presentation

Good afternoon everyone.Ìý I just think we’ll make a little start.Ìý My name’s Steven Porter, I am the visual impairment special lead for the education authority’s sensory service.Ìý First of all, what I want to do is to explain to you what the sensory service is and what we do.Ìý So, first of all, the sensory service is important to the education authority that looks after the needs of children with sensory impairment, either being hearing or vision.Ìý Looking then at what is our main technology support that we give to children of the mainstream technology and then there’s specialist technology.Ìý Now the one thing which is quite unique to the education authority in Northern Ireland and does not replicate itself across all the jurisdictions is that we, as an education authority, will provide mainstream technology for pupils in schools whereas in other jurisdictions it would be that the children would only be provided by specialist equipment.Ìý The mainstream technology that we provide is the iPad, we can also provide laptops for pupils.Ìý If a young person is finding that even with mainstream technology access is more of an issue, we can provide what we describe as a specialist technology.Ìý And by specialist technology that can range from things such as video magnifiers, currently our young folks in the education system who are learning braille will be provided with either a Humanware BrailleNote touch or the braille sense.Ìý All of these devices being provided by the education authority.

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Kilpatrick

I’m Erin Kilpatrick and I’m from Fermanagh.Ìý At the moment, in school, I’m using a BrailleSense, before that I had been looking at JAWS, learning how to use it.

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White

And just imagine you’ve got an audience in front of you who doesn’t know much about this sort of stuff, how would you describe a BrailleSense?

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Kilpatrick

The front of it is like a braille keyboard, it’s like kind of a braille version of a PC and there’s arrow keys on it, you can see folders, make documents, you can do all the stuff you can do on a computer basically – send emails.Ìý I’m using it now to do my work in school to email attachments to my classroom assistants.

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White

I mean, Erin, tell me a bit about your school because you’re at a mainstream school, I think.

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Kilpatrick

Well, my timetable, I have catchup periods where I don’t have to do the work, I have like a read room where I keep all my equipment and I can have sessions on how to use my technology there and I can look at it and practise on it there.Ìý And I have two classroom assistants and [indistinct words] that guided me around and helped me with my work.

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White

Alright, Erin, thank you.

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Actuality – braille demonstration

… so now you’re in uncontracted braille.

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Trying to do a bit of algebraic fraction to see how it copes with it.

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White

Well, it’s almost at the end of the day and school is over, which could explain why Colin Hughes is here because you are a teacher at Jordanstown Special School.Ìý I mean what’s brought you here at the end of a long day?

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Hughes

Yes.Ìý Well, I’m here to try and understand all the developments and see if there’s anything that we could possibly use to help educate our young people.Ìý And I’m a maths teacher, so I was specifically thinking about how the technology can be used in a mathematical context.Ìý So, there’s one or two things that I’ve heard are in development that I’m wondering are here and I can get my hands on but we’ll see.Ìý I grew up with nystagmus myself, so I’m also interested for how it could help me as well.

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White

I mean this is the first big exhibition of its type in Northern Ireland, I mean I rather assume you’d quite like to see more of that?

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Hughes

Yeah, absolutely, yeah.Ìý As you know yourself with all this sort of thing, you can hear about it, you can see it on websites and things and videos maybe but there’s nothing like getting your hands on it just to actually know what it’s capable of, you know.

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White

Right, I think that just about sum’s it up.Ìý Colin Hughes, thank you very much.

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Hughes

Thank you very much, thank you.

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White

Jackie Brown, we talked to you early this morning, it’s now pretty late in the afternoon, your reaction to what was your idea?

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Brown

I am overwhelmed, to be honest, it’s not very often that I would be stuck for words.Ìý Just everybody has said how overdue this exhibition has been and now we’ve got one, can we please have another one.Ìý And all the suppliers I’ve spoken to today seem to be really happy and willing to come back – when are you going to have it again.Ìý And I think that’s a good sign.Ìý It’s just been like going to Sight Village, Birmingham, here today, that’s the sort of comparison.Ìý It’s just been really, really busy all day.Ìý So, even if we have it bi-annually or every year, it would be great.

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White

Tired?

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Brown

Very.Ìý I want my bed.

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