Hello our little windswept listeners and welcome to episode 89. This is an exciting show for Jan, Óran and Clodagh as we welcome our first guest host to the podcast. Let's say hello to Gordon Anthony, aka Blind Gordon who joins us all the way from Livingston in Scotland. Gordon, a former Miss World (who knew!) is literally taking this one lying down. Wait until Mrs Blind Gordon finds out! Have you ever used Aira? (Yes, that’s the correct spelling – we double-checked!) Aira is a visual interpreting service for people who are blind or have low vision. Well Gordon has used it, and he thinks it is great, especially when he is heading to a football match. Unfortunately Aira can't help Dundee United win matches, but at least it can get Gordon home safely afterwards. Our guest this week is Maeve McCluskey from Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind. Maeve is the Breeding Programme Supervisor and Jan and Óran have a great conversation with her all about how to breed super guide dogs. Gordon has a TV Corner tip: he has been watching Criminal Record on Apple TV and thinks it is great. Clodagh has fallen for the Scottish fleet of gritting trucks, and we have an email from Ciara Mac. You know how much we love hearing from our listeners so keep your emails coming in: [email protected]. So, hop into your favourite cozy pyjamas, tuck yourself into your snuggly bed, and get ready to be soothed by the only guys worth listening to: Blind Guys Chat. 6 out of 10 storms prefer it to being fierce windy. Links for this podcast: Aira: https://aira.io/ Scottish gritters truck names: https://swtrunkroads.scot/winter-service/meet-our-gritter-fleet/

Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind: https://www.guidedogs.ie/. If you love Irish Guide Dogs and their work as much as we do, you can donate here: https://www.guidedogs.ie/ways-to-help/donate

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Hello our little frozen hibernating hedgehogs and welcome to episode 88 of the podcast. What is the weather like in your part of the world? Well, it's feckin' freezin' here in Europe and the Blind Guys cannot wait for spring. Have you heard of 11 Labs? It's a text to speech and AI voice generator and Stuart has been playing around with it to try to clone his voice. Does it work? Hmmmm... yes and no, we'll hear more from Stuart on it. (Link: elevenlabs.io/) Óran is asking the guys if it is time to think about a qwerty refreshable Braille display. He reckons his typing on a qwerty keyboard is faster than typing on a Perkins-style keyboard but Stuart is not too sure, what do you think? perhaps you have a Humanware Mantis Q40 or a Helptek Activator display. Let us know what you think at [email protected]. Our guest is the lovely Nora Nagle from Boston; south Boston to be precise. Nora talks to us about what it’s like having a guide dog in the US and she shares lots of stories including one about an unpleasant experience when a security guard tried to remove her and her guide dog out of a building. It's a great interview so do have a listen. We have information on events you might like to sign up for: ·       The first is happening this evening, January 11th at 5pm (Irish) 6pm (CET) or 12pm (EST) and is called ‘Celebrate Braille Literacy with Focus’. This webinar hosted by Freedom Scientific will demonstrate how to set up "split braille'" on Focus Braille displays, how to connect more than 1 device to your display, and how to improve braille literacy with a refreshable braille display. Register here for this event: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_XoFHxDqWTQ6jkWuiWy-LVg#/registration ·       If you are interested in joining a Braille book club, then look no further than the Braillists Foundation. The book club happens every Thursday and caters for all levels of braille reading including speed and which braille code you prefer to read in. More information about the Braillists Foundation book club is available here: www.braillists.org/uncategorised/join-us-in-the-book-club/ or you can register for it directly here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0ucuqqrDsjHtMzH4ytq2NPV0rUpYAGRXEm Clodagh has an email from Anna Cody who is as succinct as ever! And we finish up with an announcement from Stuart. So, strip down to your thermals, and bathe yourself in the revitalising warm, silky-smooth, dulcet tones of a Blind Guys Chat podcast. 4 out of 6 newborn puppies prefer it to play-fighting!

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Welcome to another of our BGC bites. In this podcast we are talking to some more service providers who had stands at Sight Village Southeast recently.

You will hear from Greg Hargraves from Paige Braille who will talk about Paige Connect, a Bluetooth circuit board that connects to old-school Perkins Braillers allowing the text to be displayed on a PC, which is a pretty cool trick.

Clodagh is busy on this podcast as she is talking with Andy Farrell from Guide Dogs UK, Richard Black from the Talking News Federation, and Rose Woodall from Queen Alexander College

So, forget about the long dark nights for a moment and tune in for some relaxed chat from Sight Village 2023. Links to organisations in this podcast: Paige Braille: https://paigebraille.com/buy Guide Dogs UK: https://www.guidedogs.org.uk/about-us/ Talking News Federation: tnf.org.uk Queen Alexander College: https://www.queenalex.co.uk/

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Welcome to our BGC bites. In this podcast we are talking to some more service providers who had stands at Sight Village Southeast in London during November. Óran talks with Michelle Young from The Braillists Foundation about all its services. Then Clodagh chats with Kate Arkell from Retina UK which, to quote Kate, is "a charity supporting people affected by inherited sight loss and investing in medical research to help make their challenges a thing of the past." So, take a quick break from building that bridge across the Indian Ocean and chill out with Blind Guys Chat for a few minutes. Links to organisations in this podcast: The Braillists Foundation: https://www.braillists.org/ Retina UK: https://retinauk.org.uk/

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Hello our tired little elves, and welcome to the BGC Christmas Quiz 2023 Extravaganza Special! We hope you are managing to get through the festive season unscathed, and are enjoying lots of time to relax, play, walk, run, jog, swim, or just lay about the house and chill. This show is devoted to our Christmas Quiz which we recorded with some of our most loyal listeners just before Santa started delivering goodies around the world. We have teams from as far west as Saint Louis and as far east as Italy. Who will win the coveted prize of a pre-loved 1982 BMW 3 Series complete with fluffy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror? Listen to find out!

So, why not strip down to your sleigh bells in front of the roaring fire, cuddle into your purring pussy, polish off your second box of chocolates, and settle in for the only quiz worth listening to this crimbo: The Blind Guys Chat Christmas Quiz 2023 Extravaganza Special! 9 out of 10 New Year’s resolutions prefer it to turning over a new leaf.

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Hello our little blown away leaves and welcome to episode 86 of the show. Are you sorted for Christmas? Well, in case you’re not, we've got the perfect festive gift for you. Why not join us for the Blind Guys Chat Christmas Quiz which we are broadcasting live on December 21st at 8pm Irish time? That's 3pm in the EST, 10pm in South Africa and 11am in the North Pole!

If you want to be part of a quiz team and answer some easy but fun questions, then let us know by no later than end of day on Monday December 18th. (Clodagh says that deadline is too tight, so you can tell us by end of day on Tuesday December 19th!) Click on this link which will take you to a simple Microsoft form to fill out: http://tinyurl.com/BGC-Quiz-2022-entry-form. Even if you just want to listen to the show live, but not compete, please complete the form, otherwise you won’t get a special link for the show.

Go on - give it a go!! You never know, you might win a prize and be crowned Quiziest Blind Guys Chatter 2023!

Our guest this week is the wonderful Veronika Hyks. Veronika is here to talk to us about her 7 years of audio describing Netflix's The Crown. It has been a mammoth task and an admirable body of work that Veronika has created, so why not sit back and listen to her story. She might even divulge some secrets.

Has Jan gone over to the Dark Side? Has he just purchased an Android device!! Let's fine out, eh?

It seems Sky Stream is not going to well for Stuart and for blindies in general. It looks like a software update has broken audio description playout. Is this an action for Dave Nason?

Óran is not wild about the AI service Microsoft are now providing within Be My Eyes app. Have you used it? What do you think? Also, what do you think of Chat GPT Voice? Let us know: send an email to [email protected].

Have you been watching All The Light We Cannot See on Netflix? Well Veronika Hyks and the Blind Guys would like to hear from you if you have. What is your view on the audio description for the show, and what do you think of Aria Mia Loberti’s introduction to the show? Have a listen here: https://web-anycast.prod.ftl.netflix.com/tudum/articles/all-the-light-we-cannot-see-aria-mia-lorbeti-audio-introduction We also want to know what you think of the AD level on the show Obliterated, which is also on Netflix. And it seems Óran has gone potty for the 2 cockney brothers on Amazon Prime's 007 Road to a Million, not to mention Gary Oldman in the new series of Slow Horses on Apple TV.

So, put down that bottle of Baileys. Throw your Android phones in the fire, start brushing up on your general knowledge and don't forget to sign up to the Christmas quiz for the best podcast this side of cold turkey: Blind Guys Chat.

7 out of 10 Squid game viewers prefer it to Jeopardy

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Hello our little frozen icicles, and welcome to Part 2 of Sight Village South East. This week we have more interviews with product manufacturers and developers from the recent Sight Village event which took place in London a few weeks ago.

We are talking to: Bruno Vollmer from biped.ai who tells us about his great product that straps over your shoulders and helps detect obstacles in the area so you can avoid collisions. The harness uses autonomous driving technology to detect obstacles in the wearer's path. You can read more about the product here: https://www.biped.ai/

Ben Andrews tells us about his book “Nicky and Candy's Street (Better Places)”. Ben wrote this book to highlight the issues disabled people currently face so that children, parents and educators can raise awareness of these issues while providing an outlet to take positive action. Ben believes introducing these concepts at an early age will increase these children’s understanding of the difficulties encountered by people with vision impairments so that they grow into adults who are better able to build a more accessible and inclusive future. You can read more about Ben’s book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nicky-Candys-Street-Better-Places/dp/1913230325

Daniel from Sensotec talks to us about their magnification tool for smartboards in the classroom. Read more about this product here: https://www.pro.sensotec.com/my-board-buddy-air.

Óran catches up with Mike Page from Touchpoint Vision to talk about the latest developments in OrCam and OrCam Read. These wireless smart cameras which, when attached outside eyeglass frames, can read and verbalize text, and also product barcodes. This information is converted to spoken words and entered " into the user’s ear". Face-recognition is also part of OrCam's feature set. You can read more about OrCam here:  https://touchpointvision.co.uk/

Clodagh chats with Alex Ward from Seeing Solutions who tells her about MiniGuide, a smart navigation aid and also an update to the wearable headset Mercury ViewPoint SmartVisor which you can use for magnification or text to speech. Read more about Seeing Solutions products here: https://pamtrad.co.uk/seeing-solutions/.

Alan Davis from Humanware talks to Óran about Annie, a new product for teaching young children Braille in a fun way. Humanware also have the Monarch coming out in 2024. This is a multi-line Braille display. Is this the future of Braille displays? We discuss. You can read more about Humanware products here: https://www.humanware.com, and watch a video about the Monarch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=I5JLDkWGkF0&ab_channel=HumanWare.

Julie Davis and Geoff Madge talk to us about the Ultracane, which uses ultrasound to detect obstacles in your path, enabling you to navigate around them. Find out more about Ultracane here: https://www.ultracane.com

..and finally we speak to 2 of the sighted guide volunteers about their experiences at the event.

It's a packed show folks, so load some paper into your Perkins, type in that email address and start writing your letter to Santa, cos we have no doubt there is something here for everyone’s list.

Blind Guys Chat: 12 out of 14 British royals prefer it to The Crown TV series

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Hello our little winter snowflakes and welcome to a very special show. The Blind Guys have just returned from London where 2 major events happened... well, 3 if you count the King opening parliament! Yes, all 3 Blind Guys were in the same room for the first time since the dinosaurs walked the earth. Ironically, Jan, Stuart and Óran lined up their wormholes to coincide with the opening day (only day really) of Sight Village South East. It was a momentous occasion with streamers, fireworks, a 29-gun salute, and cake, although it seems only Jan knew about the cake 😮.

Anyway, on with the show. We wanted to provide our listeners with as much information on Sight Village as we could, and because we can't count; have decided to spend the next 335 shows on the event in London. So, settle in folks.

You are going to hear from: Glenn Tookey (Sight and Sound Technologies) https://www.sightandsoundtechnology.ie/.

Ellis Ellis from Vision Aid https://www.visionaid.co.uk/ who will be speaking about magnifiers and Braille displays, including products from Help Tech and Sightcare.

Jean Marc from WeWalk https://wewalk.io/en/ talks to us about the WeWalk cane.

Adi Kushnir from AccessMind https://accessmind.io/optima.php who shows us the new Optima - the all-in-one Braille laptop computer.

Clodagh speaks to Molemisi Kono of Visual Eyes Africa International https://www.facebook.com/people/Visual-EYES-Afrika-international/100079083263922/, and Brad Pilkington from the official Turn a Blind Eye TikTok channel: @theofficialturnablindeye

Then the Guys will give their views on Sight Village South East Part 1.

So strip off your cloaking device, check the warp core is online, set shields to maximum, enhance the deflector array and engage to the fantastic world of Blind Guys Chat

19 out of 25 town halls prefer it to town hall meetings.

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Hello our little hibernating hedgehogs. We hope you are well and remembered to put the clocks back last Sunday. We start this week's show off with some exercise, as after the recording our own Jonas Vingegaard A.K.A., Jan was setting off cycling in preparation for his participation in the first ever Tour de Underwater Volcanos. Let's hope he can find Nemo, eh?! Stuart has news about the new Windows 11 update. Apparently one of the cool new things will be the ability to set audio levels per application and there is also a new feature called Windows co-pilot. It seems this pilot can fly you anywhere it wants to go. Sadly, that might not be the location where you actually want to go, but hey, it's the thought that counts. Also, there’s a new update to Chat GPT which means that it should be capable of integration into Siri, which could mean you can pretty much replace Siri on iPhone if you desire. You can read more about it by clicking on this link: https://bgr.com/tech/you-can-replace-siri-with-chatgpt-on-your-iphone-heres-how/ Will you be upgrading to JAWS 2024? Jan has news on the latest version which includes a new cool feature called "Face in View" which means people will no longer see your bald patch or the dirty laundry behind you during an online meeting. To activate Face in View (only for Jaws 2024 users), press the layered keystroke, INSERT+SPACEBAR, followed by F, and then O. We continue our series on guide dogs this week and are joined by Cliodhna Ni Laoghaire from Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind. Cliodhna (pronounced Cliona) has been a guide dog instructor and trainer in IGD for 17 years so there is very little she doesn't know about training guide dogs. Cliodhna talks us through the process of training these little superheroes from puppies through to adulthood. Sjef & Larry, listen up: Cliodhna might have some tips for you. No TIPS not TREATS silly billies! ..and don't forget you can make a donation here: https://www.guidedogs.ie/ways-to-help/donate and find out more about guide dogs at : https://www.guidedogs.ie/ In TV corner we are recommending ‘Lessons in Chemistry’ on Apple TV, and Clodagh has become rather fond of 'Bodies' on Netflix. And in a change to our scheduled programming, Mr Jan Bloem is recommending 'Beckham'. Can you believe that! Jan actually watched a TV programme! We also have news on the upcoming last series of ‘The Crown’, part 1 of season 6 will air on Netflix on November 16 with part 2 publishing on December 14. Finally, if you are heading to Sight Village South East on November 7, keep a lookout, or should that be an ear out!?! for Blind Guys Chat – the whole cast will be there, and Óran or Clodagh might point a microphone in your general direction for a quick word. So, finish up your bath and shake yourself off like a wet dog of a Thursday evening. Head down to the fire and get nice and toastie - ready for the number one podcast on Wimbledon Common: Blind Guys Chat. 38 out of 40 chopper bikes prefer it to wheelies.

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Hello, our favourite little squirrels, and welcome to Episode 82 of Blind Guys Chat. We begin this week with tales from Nairobi. Our own travelling wilbury, Jan, has just returned from South Africa where he was introduced to every person living on the continent - because he's so famous don't ya know! Yes, Jan has been in the region for the last week selling his wares and wearables, and is very impressed with how much knowledge blind and low vision people in Nairobi have about assistive technology, especially compared to 15 years ago. But it wasn't all work and no play for Jan. No, no, folks. He managed a little play time with some of the local pets in the surrounding areas of this modern city.

Do you take taxis? It appears that Óran has had some trouble recently with taxis refusing to collect himself and Larry (the very best guide dog in the world ever). And before you say it’s because Óran is so grumpy, it isn’t that, we promise. We want to hear from you: have you had any bad experiences recently and more importantly, did you report the incident to your local taxi regulator? Let us know: [email protected]. Tell us all your taxi-related stories!

Before Clodagh gets readin' those emails, she wants to tell you about RNIB's campaign. It's called ‘See the person not the sightloss’, and apparently it is very good. You can check it out here: https://www.rnib.org.uk/our-campaigns/see-differently-see-the-person/.

In emails this week, it appears that Dave Nason and Sky are potty for Stuart’s latest parody song, much to Jan and Óran's astonishment. Dave also wants to know if you can help him with his upcoming trip to London. The Blind Guys are recommending he avails himself of an Access Card which, among other things, offers discounts on some of the main attractions in London. You can check it out here: www.accesscard.online. You can even skip some queues if you have one of these – yay!

We have an audio message from Tim Dixon. Tim has recorded a wonderful report on navigating Sight Village where he recently met Stuart and lived to tell the tale.

So, stop lighting fireworks and bangers. Strip down to your "I hate halloween sox, Throw on your "I got married in Vegas" dressing gown and settle in for the best entertainment this side of a bread roll: Blind Guys Chat. 12 out of 16 Unicorns prefer it to being imaginary!

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