#137: I wouldn't do it like that!

Foreign.

Gentlemen and you're very welcome to episode 137 of Blind Guys Chat. Now much like Masala, we are straight out of the gate.

Of the Liverpool.

Yeah.

Liverpool headquarters.

Our American friends are like what, what, what is he? What is.

Yeah, but, but to be honest, Liverpool is not having a great season. You know, even.

Not even Liverpool know what's going on with Liverpool right now.

Ask Mo Salah. He's got opinions.

He's definitely got opinions. Yeah, he's very, very.

What is his opinion?

Well, he used. In fairness or unfairness? He used our term today I. When I was listening to the press report where he said that he was being thrown under the bus by his manager.

I think, you know, I think we can just claim trademark on that and get a bunch of money for you.

Every time he says it.

Yeah, yeah.

Well let's. Let's keep on the football theme. How are Ardon doing, Jan?

Thanks for asking, Oren. Hey, this is a nice topic tonight. How long do you have?

Hey.

Not very long, John.

But we.

Have a great season. To be honest it. I think it is been one of the best seasons ever to be honest. It is really nice. We have played last Friday we were in the stadium with the. All four of us even you know, we were although separated. Tijo was on his own gang of course and I was with Chantal and Rosalie on the Blind Tribune. So that was really nice. And we won 2 to 1 against FC Emmen and we are having 46 points and that is. Yeah, no idea what that is.

Where does that put you in the league then?

Number one.

Number one.

Yeah.

In your league?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In our league? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course Mo has fi nortis in the other league in the. In the Premier League of the Netherlands but we are in the Kaka Day. That or the. That is the Koken Compune. The Kitchen champion.

The Kitchen champion division. Yeah, the Kitchen very good in the kitchen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean no. Hello.

That'S me. The name of the. It's the name of the sponsor.

Sponsor.

Yeah, yeah, no, we are actually doing well and it's really. And I must ask Blind Gordon, how is Dundee United doing? You know, because now I'm in the safe mood so. Yeah, I can asked yet but.

Yeah.

Let us know, let us know, let us know.

Suspect it might be doing too well because he hasn't been on to us recently. So yeah, maybe he's.

I think he's in a writer's block or he is writing a lot.

Oh yeah, I think one of those.

Two Romans and, and, and nevertheless it's all going well. We had last night 14 degrees, guys.

14.

It's been really mild actually.

Yeah.

Then the night was warmer than daytime. It's really amazing.

Yeah. For our American friends. That's not Fahrenheit because that would be extremely cold.

Yeah, that's Celsius.

Yeah, yeah.

Those people think 14 degrees is warm. They are hardcore.

We are hardcore though.

It's. We are, we are. But it's still Celsius. That's true.

That's true. Well, you had also a good, good weekend if I notice. Hey.

Yeah, they won 6 to 1, which was pretty good. Although they had like a little bit of a bad period. So we sort of lost first place to another team and now we're trying to catch up again, but it's kind of difficult because the other team keeps winning so they need to stop, they need to be more considerate, you know, lose a couple matches because then we can get closer again. Yeah, but we're in second place. Solidly in second place. So that's good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also next year the world championship, you know, the Dutch team qualified for that and they play in, in Texas for instance, so it will be hot also during those games.

Yeah, but I think the stadiums, most stadiums have air conditioning, so that's good.

Oh, just like in Qatar.

What they had just like in Qatar. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, the players are going to be out. The players won't.

No.

Well, I mean the whole stadium, like.

The whole stadium is air conditioned and actually one of the stadiums is closed off. Even you can, you can put the roof on and then.

Oh, really?

You're inside? Yeah, yeah.

You could be inside with Trump.

There's only so much sports talk I can handle. You know, my little girl brain just goes.

Let's go to our first. Well, our only. No, not our only insert to Mr. Stuart Lawler who has some comments to make about the haptics Codex device, the Braille display that he saw in site Village London.

Hello blind guys, this is Stuart Lawler here, your former co host, checking in, loving the show at all as always and really enjoyed the last podcast on the eaa and let's hope for ongoing improvements in the world of accessibility, especially I think in the, in the aviation sector.

One major European airline I think would need to do a bit of work in that respect. Anyway, I wanted to comment on the discussion around the new Braille display from new haptics which is called Codex, which Mohammed and I have seen already. Mohammed, I know you saw it, I think at CSUN last year, as did I. And then I saw it again. One of my questions at CSUN of course was how loud is the thing? And you don't get to hear how loud it is when you're in an exhibition hall. And they told me not very loud, but of course that doesn't really mean anything, you know, what does that, what, what, what are they saying? So we had it here in Dublin in October and I sat with it in a room and really, you know, genuinely, I had to put my ear down to the thing to hear it. The pump has been changed. It's significantly smaller. So it's about the size of a, you know, one of those transformers you have on your laptop between the two, the two cables and the pump. We call it a transformer. I mean it is a pump. I suppose it's using air as well. But air and power go through the same cable, so you don't have two connections. So you plug the plug into the socket, you have this little box in the middle which is the pump and then there's a cable coming from the other side which is going into the codex, feeding both air and power to the device.

It is not a portable device. I mean that's the one challenge with it that I think everyone's going to struggle with, especially in terms of marketing this thing. It's going to be challenging to use this in education where portability is important. Their view is using it in the workplace for people who have a braille display on their desks. But of course the reality is the number of people who are working with a braille display on their desks is probably far and few between. And even for people who are they probably like, the idea of being able to pick up their braille display and take it with them if they're going somewhere. But I think, I think the codecs has a couple of really unique features and probably the most interesting one is the use of, and the implementation of the touch cell technology. So you can double tap on a, on a letter and it automatically routes the cursor to that point. And this, they have this working really well at the moment in Microsoft Word when you're using it with Jaws. So I think it's one to watch. They interestingly have taken the approach or taken the view to stick with text until they can do multi line text really well. Then they'll start exploring graphics. I have a lot of hope for new haptics because of the people behind it. And I think we need to get this braille display into this part of the world and watch this space is what I'd say in that one. And just a quick comment on site Village in general it was very busy. It was wonderful to see Mr. Yan bloom. We sat and had a glass of Coke together and genuinely serious. That's all we had was a glass of co. We enjoyed having a quick catch up and yeah, humanware Braille note evolve. The asset test will be if it can function well as a note taker and a powerful PC because the specs are really good. I'd be curious to get some more information on things like battery life. All that will become clearer as the months go on and we'll hopefully see a launch sometime around csun. But definitely they're, they are to be commended for bringing it out. The market badly needs a good Windows based note taker so here's hoping. Enjoy the show as always folks. Take care and chat to you soon.

Thanks here. That's great. We are wondering, did you manage to take the aquarium with you when you were first trying to steal that braille display?

The shark is there, you know.

Now to be honest. You know, Mo and me, we had an optelec party. It was 50 years and then we were in Rotterdam in the zoo and there you have this big aquarium, you know, and then you can walk through and then you, you go through a tunnel or something and then you, you see the sharks swimming over.

Yeah, we had dinner with the sharks.

Yeah. Dinner with the sharks, yeah.

And the person who finished last was fed to the sharks.

Yeah.

Well, just going back to the codex, if anybody is interested in price, which I was. I did ask Stuart after he did his recording and thank you very much again, Stuart. Yeah, I think it is. He think he said starting at about eight, eight and a half thousand dollars.

Holy moly.

And there's also the multi liner.

It's multi line.

Yeah.

He didn't say whether you get the fish with that in the aquarium or not, but I, I probably think.

No, you want to get lobster I.

Think with that lobster.

Yeah.

Well, for a multi line display it's not too expensive. There are more expensive offerings out there. There are so cheaper offerings out there. But yeah, yeah.

The monarch is 15, 000, you know, and the doctor $18,000.

Yeah, yeah, yep.

Yeah. And is it really that. I suppose it must make it easier if it's multi line. Right. If you're a fast reader and you're, you like to use it a lot. I suppose it would make a lot of sense. Would it to have a multi line display.

Yeah, not really when you're a fast reader, but. But also for the overview, you know, that's also. You get. You can visualize more things, also graphics, but also in Excel, for example.

Table.

Okay, very good.

Yeah, it's very cool. It's just extremely expensive and you know, for some people it's attainable but not for everyone obviously. So.

Yeah, I mean if you're country that, that gives grants to people, that makes a big difference. Unfortunately in Ireland we don't. We will give people their VAT back, their, their tax, their sales tax back, but that's, that's all. I don't think there are grants really unless you're lucky to work for somebody that's happy to pay for you.

But.

So you don't get it funded in, in Ireland in a way.

No. Oh yeah, it's a bummer, isn't it? Whereas the UK are very generous as far as I know they are.

Yeah. Thank you very much to the Netherlands and Spain just last week agreeing to take part in the Eurovision. And I don't know about you guys, but our broadcaster decided that we will not broadcast. I don't know if you guys are doing it, but we will not broadcast.

No, we're broadcasting, we're broadcasting.

I suspect we may, we may change our decision on that. But at least we are not taking part in the Eurovision.

No, we're not taking part either.

It's a pity though that not other countries follow us, you know, I wonder.

Will they though in time?

It takes a long time to swing opinion, right?

Yeah.

I think like the apartheid regime in South Africa, the protest really started in the late 60s.

Yeah.

And it became a little bit more mainstream in the 70s, but only in the 80s did the pressure really ramp up.

We had a group of women who worked in one of our supermarkets here, one of our Irish supermarkets, it was called Dun Stores. And they went on strike because they said they wouldn't handle goods that came from apartheid. No, no, from apartheid Africa. And they ended up becoming friends with Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu and they were invited to Mandela's funeral. They were guests of honor at the funeral. You know, just ordinary down to earth Dublin women. But they were on strike for years and didn't, didn't take pay or anything. Was a huge thing. It was absolutely huge.

But Iceland was also.

They didn't decide yet also.

No, no, no. But they probably. They also. Iceland and Belgium did not decide yet, but I would guess that they're going to decide to not come either.

I suspect it'll be a turnaround from the EBU in January.

Saying you're. We're kicking you out Israel.

Yeah. But then Germany and Austria are going to complain.

Well, let them.

Yeah, that's true. I mean even also this, this German Bonskan Silier, he. He went now to Israel for a. For a trip.

Yeah. Germany is really performing its support for Israel hard.

Yeah.

Really?

That's interesting.

Yeah. Because of the past.

I'm gonna vote for the boycott.

You know, I'm.

I'm not gonna.

You're not going to watch it?

No, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to watch.

Blind guys have decided. Well, we can take a decision. We can take a vote.

Yeah, yeah, we can vote.

I. I think Larry and Chef, they will decide, you know, make the decision.

They will sleep on it, you know. How is Larry, by the way? How is he coping?

For all Larry? He's gone through it. Yeah. We're going to his. His specialist vet to see how his perforated has protruding disc from his back is. Is going. But I suspect he's. He's still not great. He's still slipping with his back legs, so I don't know what's going to happen.

Slipping?

Oh, yeah. So he has a protruding disc protruding through his. His back which is touching a nerve which is connected to his back legs. So that's causing him to kind of slip almost like a cartoon dog.

On.

A surface, you know, on a kind of slippery surface. Poor fellow. But he never complained, so he wouldn't think he was in pain, but.

Okay.

Doesn't he not scream or, you know.

No, he's very, very good that way. No, you wouldn't. You wouldn't know he was sick at all.

Okay.

Just got to keep it. We keep an eye on him to make sure he's okay.

But.

Yeah, yeah, we'll see.

But he. He got no medication for it to pain.

Well, he got. He did get medication. He got a. He got a steroid injection.

And we're. He's getting some simple human paracetamol.

But. But what about your process now? Are you forced to use the cane or. I. Is there any idea you get a replacement or.

There's no.

What is the plan?

No news yet about any replacement, but I don't expect any. Any. I am. I am in furnace working Larry a little bit when we're going out. You know, when we go out for a walk. He's supposed to. He's working, but other than that we're not really. I'm not really doing much with him.

No, but. But can you cope because you had Larry for a reason.

I tell you, it's very hard. I'll tell you what I did one day, one of the days a couple of weeks ago was I did decide to leave the harness at home and I took him out just on lead and I had the cane.

Yeah.

And it was, we started off. It was. It was working fine and we started off on a route, but actually what.

Really gave me trouble was finding the house on coming back because it's normally like you just don't think about it. And Larry turns in when he's, you know, when he.

Oh, yeah, yeah. So you had coffee with the neighbors.

Yeah.

Hey.

Ah.

Or a long time no see. Hey, that's good.

1. One neighbor actually saw. Saw myself and Larry and she ran over and said, are you okay? I'm fine. Yeah. We're just going for a walk. And then had to explain why Larry wasn't on harness or what. But yeah, that's, that's that thing of the other thing. I know you know, and I, I know you know, of course, Mo is a fast cane walker, but I found the whole going back to using the cane was incredibly slow, you know. Okay. From where you, where you are with Larry or Chef, you know, just. Yeah, just take off and you go.

Yeah, I'm a freight train. I walk very fast. Like, very fast.

Yeah. But I take Chef also a lot of times out without or only using the cane and I. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I want to keep practicing. It's really because I don't want to lose the skills because I'm. To be honest, Chef was having in the weekend a little bit pain in his neck. So, you know, it was that he was overstretched his sphere.

He stretched, he over stretched, stretches muscles a little bit. So you could even see when you put an A sweet on. On the floor, then he could not bend his head, you know.

And does he whine or.

He does, yeah, once in a while he. The. The first attempt, you know, when, when, when he was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He took it because he wanted to have the sweet, of course. And then he boinked then. Oh, you know, then you could really. But, but you could see it also when I was letting him out then in the beginning it was a little bit stiff, but after a while, you know, when his mates came on then, then he started to. Yeah, to walk again also a little bit more freely. Yeah, but that, but that was gone since two days now. So that was quite, quite okay. But it is really good to.

Yeah.

Keep up your skills because otherwise you feel really. I can understand Oren what you feel. That's really not nice.

I mean the skit. The skills are off. I mean I do use the cane in work a little bit when I'm there and you know, I'm fine with, with using the cane, but what I've, what I found is just the speed of.

Yeah.

Using the cane and of course it banging into your. Well, it always did. And maybe I'm doing it wrong, but it always banged into my, my stomach and I'd be bruised and.

Yeah. Coughing something.

No, but yeah, you should hold it next to you. You should hold your cane next to you so that when you, you bang it into something, it goes past your side.

So the engine is kind of at your side rather than in front.

Yes.

Well that's interesting. It's like here because I was, I was trained differently. I was trying.

Yeah, but that, that's, that's an incompetent. Sorry, it's an incompetence.

No, come on. Look, the way you're, the way you're supposed to walk, even with a cane, it's like you would walk normally. So keep your hands at your sides because this is exactly the problem. If you put it in front of your, if your belly, if you run into something. Yeah. You're doubled over, you lose your breath. Like it's incredibly painful. Don't do that. Put it, put your hand at your side and move the cane in front of you.

Mr. Mo, you're not only a lawyer but also mobility trainer.

I told you, I'm like chatgpt. I can.

Version 1.3.

Take issue with that. Please contact Mohammed last year. Mohammed last year.

Yeah.

Biz Comm, uk.uk, whatever. But not blind guys chatgmail.com thank you very much.

Please contact blind guys chatgmail.com Claudia can read it out. Go ahead.

Do you know, do you know.

Like.

I remember people saying that the, the height or the length of your cane should be a certain, like it should be relative to your height, right?

Yeah.

Yes.

And I think it's very private to Mohammed.

Would you.

No, I'm not actually.

But what I'm. What I'm wondering though is, is your cane longer than average? Because if you're holding it by your side, it has to go, it has to extend past your left side. If you're right handed, I'm guessing.

Right. Aha. Haha.

Answer that one now. There you go.

My cane sort of comes up to between My mouth and my nose.

So that's quite long.

That's completely different than the canes, than the measurements we. Because it usually comes up to the top of our. Kind of just the top of our chest is where the measurement is taken.

Yeah, yeah, you can. You can do that too. But then you don't walk as fast because. Right. You know, you'll only run into things when they are.

It's like an early system.

The torso, if it's slightly longer, that's what I prefer. But, yes, you can also. You can also have one up until your chest, but I prefer one that's a little bit longer so that you can walk a little bit faster. Yeah.

So I wonder, because Stuart also goes very fast, so I'm wondering, is his longer than average as well then? Yeah, that'll be interesting. Stuart, let us know.

Yeah, we throw you for the bush.

Oh. Anyway, let's talk more tech.

Okay.

Talk about.

Yeah.

I need to preempt this by saying I have heard that we're about to talk about. I've heard that the reviews are not good. Mr. Mohammed Lashear, you got. I took every of your allies.

Yeah.

Glasses.

I took the plugs.

The glasses, in terms of the form factor, are very promising.

Okay.

The.

Current iteration of the Ally glasses are not worth the money.

And the problem with Ally is especially with the glasses, I think on the phone, it's less of a problem, but on the glasses, the connection is not very stable, and it gets very confused. So the problems that I run into, for example, is when I ask it to scan text, it just sits there forever. And it can't scan text when I'm asking it to describe the scene. Sometimes it'll work, but sometimes it will just stay quiet forever. And I say, hello, Are you still there? So what does the scene look like? And it'd be like, sorry, I did not receive any visual data.

And then it takes another picture, and once it gets confused, you have to end the conversation because it will not write itself. Once it gets confused, it's confused forever.

Oh.

So it starts taking double pictures. It starts really getting confused and saying, you know, it doesn't see anything. And I also see Ally hallucinating a little bit more often. So I had this quiche from the supermarket, and I asked it, like, okay, so how long does it need to go into the oven? And it said 12 minutes. And then I took out be my eyes. And be my eyes said 15 minutes. And then I took out chatgpt. And it also said 15 minutes. So I went back to Ally. And ally said, no, 12 minutes. And said, are you sure? And it said, yes, I'm sure. It's 12. You know, it's 12, not 15.

Poisoning. So mind of its own.

And this was Ally on the phone because on the glasses I couldn't even get it to see the quiche. It wouldn't, it wouldn't tell me anything about the quiche at all. In fact, funnily enough, it would ask me to describe the quiche for them so that they could help me. Like, that's what, that's what you're here for. That's what you're. That's your job.

Yeah. So I will eat it.

You describe it. I'm gonna say an A and I'm gonna say like an E for effort. But there is. It's not good enough. At this point in time, based on my experience, I cannot recommend it. Whether it's a technical hiccup will be fixed, whatever is irrelevant. Like the experience I'm having. It's not worth the money now. I'm not going to send it back because what I'm going to do is I'm going to keep, keep it and try it out every now and then to see if they got it better and then maybe I'll be able to recommend it down the line. But right now, Ally, simply on the glasses is not good enough.

How much are they?

So I paid €630. They're now more expensive. I pre ordered them.

Oh, wow. Okay.

Wow.

Yes.

Yeah, that's not, not.

It's not cheap.

Cheap, no.

But Mo. Can I not ask you, Would you not think about returning the glasses and waiting, you know, again for a while until these issues which will have to be sorted, get sorted. I mean, it's a lot of money.

I made the choice to be a early adopter and so I know that what I get won't necessarily be the best product out there. And this, this was my expectation. Now it's. It ended up being worse than I thought.

Yeah.

But based on my expectation, I am willing to give them time to improve things. I'm just saying that if you're looking for immediate utility right now, this is not, this is not the right way. And I know these people, I run into them and trade shows quite often. But at least like if I put out a product, right, I would like to know where it falls short and where people would like to see improvements because, you know, nothing you put out is ever perfect. So you need to understand that. I don't think I would ever become Angry. These people are trying their best. This is a new. Yeah, it is a. I genuinely do believe that they're trying their best. This is a new area. It's difficult. Everybody's trying to figure it out right now and we haven't gotten there. I think they're, I mean, from what I hear, right. I don't have a meta, I don't have the Meta glasses, but from what I hear, they have their share of issues too, and Meta is hard at work fixing them. This. These also have their share of issues. They are not worth the money right now. They might become so. But if they never become worth the money, I will always keep on saying that because I think that's, that's currently my job. It is not my job to become angry at Envision because, you know, that's, that's not what I, I, I was buying them as an early adopter.

I appreciate you being a, an early adopter because, I mean, that's, oh, yeah. How we get to learn about it and, you know, it'd be interesting.

Yeah.

And they're selling it now.

That they're selling it now and they're promising these features now. So I think definitely they should be held accountable for what they're selling and what they're promising and not delivering. At least not to me. Yeah, but my job is to tell people, look, they are saying this and that, but it's not what you're getting.

What you're getting with the meta glasses. You know, in the beginning, it was not working in the Netherlands and I was using the vpn and once in a while I got really, you know, and then upset when they kicked me out again, you know.

Yes.

Yeah, well, that is the way, you know, it is really appreciating. And, and it's all, you know. Well, yeah, no, mo. You are the expert in this way. AI is still in the beginning, what we see also with jaws, etc. It is much more to come. And it is really. But so far it's so helpful. It is so more than it was, you know, it is.

But even for Jaws, right. So let's say, right, I'm working on Jaws myself and our AI features. I'm very, very heavily involved in building out our AI features. Even for those.

There's only so much, you know, internally and you do a lot of work to try to find out, okay, what would be the best way to do things. You test it, you try to make it as good as possible. But user feedback is so important and it really does not matter whether it comes publicly or it comes directly to you, because honestly, we're selling a product, so we have no obligation. So the user of that product has no obligation to come to me first to tell me if they want to say on a podcast, you know, Here is how FSCompanion disappoints me. And I hear that I'll start working or trying to work on getting it to work better. If I'm hearing this from users, it doesn't really matter what avenue it comes through. And so. And I think the same goes for Envision. Right. And I think they know. They know that their cram process, their parent process was actually fairly smooth. But then the connection, the connection to the phone just. I don't know what's happening there, but it just doesn't get the pictures consistently.

Then you have the disadvantage of our niche market, you know, against these meta people because they. They use the Ray Bans on millions of people, you know.

Yeah.

And then they can, because I was. Rosalie had her yearly performance last week in the Rotterdam Theater. And then I was taking.

Her dance and singing with the Metaglasses. And then I was really surprised, you know, how the music and the video were really being recorded. But then that is. Yeah, it is mainstream, you know, it is high. Yeah, it is perfect.

Yeah. But it's also like meta is currently on its Gen 2 and you, of course, have the gen ones. Yeah, but there's been a lot of development years.

Yeah, for sure. But you cannot.

Harsh.

That's what I want to say. It is difficult to compete or to have the same performance. You know, it is so difficult because what you say is actually true. The experiences.

Of 1,000 users or 1 million users, you know, that is.

Plus they have a bigger development team, probably.

Yeah.

Much more money involved, much more experience, much more tools. It is.

That's why it is so good that still companies like Envision do it, you know, because they have so much more empathy with our. Yeah. And understand users.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's really good.

Well, let us know, folks, if you've got the new ally solos and you've got a different opinion, then. Oh, yeah, please let us know. Blind guys chat gmail.com.

Yo, Clodagh, got the inbox. She's the email queen reading out your messages. She's the go between tips, tricks, complaints, suggestions. Blind guys chat, answering your questions.

Bringing the facts. Hit us with your wisdom or your wise crack attack.

I feel like sending an email now. Yeah. Hey.

So hit that keyboard. Let your fingers tap. We're waiting on Your voice in this funky rap show, guy, man, I love that.

Yeah.

I don't have the conscience to sing along, though.

Do you know the funny thing about this so far? Because I did ask him and he didn't mention it on his recording. And I. And he didn't mention it to me in any private message, but Stuart Lawler hasn't said a damn thing about this yet.

He might have heard it.

He did hear. No, no, no. He heard it.

How do you know?

Oh, because he was listening to the last podcast, as he always. No, no, no, no, no, because I. I said you'll hear the new podcast jingle. Let's know what you think.

Well, it's the email jingle. It's not that.

Well, sorry. Email jingle. Yeah, sorry.

Though we are working on that.

Anyway, go on over an email. Go on.

Yes, we do. Yes, we do. And actually, it's very much in the theme of what we've been talking about. It's a chap called Alexi and he's from Poland and he says, hi, everyone. I'm a recent convert to Jaws after years of using nvda. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how the three main screen readers compare, especially in terms of speed, reliability, and learning curve. Now, his subject line said, screen readers, NVDA versus JAWS versus voiceover, especially in terms of speed, reliability, and learning curve. Do you stick with one or switch depending on the device.

Oh, sugar, this is going to be hard. My polish isn't great. Podra VM puzar. I think it's like. Regards, Alexa.

I would say.

Because this is really nice. Yeah. Is hello in Polish.

Oh, very good.

I will say that except for Oren and Claudia, but Claude is not a screen reader user. Yeah, both of us are biased.

That's true. Okay, well, Oren, you. You. You might have to be in a better position then, because you've used all three, right?

Yeah, I've used all three. And I think. Well, I think when you're talking about. Let's talk about them in kind of reverse order. Let's talk about Narrator for Windows. Probably the best comment from the blind community so far about narrator, and I still think it is the case, even though I do try and use it now and again. Is the only thing you'd use narrator for is when Jaws crashes.

To reboot, you fire up narrator and reboot Jaws. That's what narrator is used for. I still, and I still believe that even though there have been some modifications and improvements, they haven't been that good. That great for me to say Oh, I might think about switching. No, not a chance.

But Narrator is free, right?

Narrator is free, yes. It's built in with Windows. Yeah.

Okay.

And I think it's a bit like somebody said to me about the. The digital audio workstation I was using many, many years ago, and it came with all this free stuff, these free plugins of eqs and Reverb and Echo and that. And somebody said to me, there's a reason they're free.

Yeah.

So I'll leave it. I'll leave it there with Narrator.

Fair enough.

NDA and, you know, is a very, very close competitor to Jaws.

It.

I find it a little bit. Can be a little bit clunky at times, but I know they have made major improvements over the last few years, and I think it is pretty much a runner, a competitive runner to Jaws. And I think two boys are being.

Very quiet, but I think they're doing deep breathing.

Probably are. But I mean, I think in fairness, I think in fairness, and I will say this, you know, as a user, and I know the guys don't want to talk about this, but I do think the way Jaws have, that the Freedom, Scientific and Vispero have handled themselves over the last few months in terms of their pricing.

Model, their new pricing model has made or shifted. People that I have that I did know were using Jaws has moved them onto nvda. Okay.

I think there's often, though, when it. When a. When a payment model changes, often there's a bit of a hiccup and there's a bit of adjustment and, you know, you know, people might change, they might change back. You never know what way it goes. But I think I know myself. I absolutely hate subscription models. I hate them with a passion. And if I can avoid them, I will, because it just makes me a bit cross. I'm a bit cranky about subscription.

All that said, there's no. Still no doubt in my mind that Jaws is still the best screen reader to use.

If you're starting off with a screen with a screen reader, okay, you might dabble with NVDA to begin with, but Jaws offers much more features and it's much more in tune, I think, with the way we need. Blind people need to use a screen reader. I wouldn't see myself jumping to NVDA anytime soon.

If ever. If ever. I mean, I'm running on a very old. JAWS 2022 is on my work machine. Very old, because.

People, powers that be won't upgrade it. But.

Yeah, but your personal one is.

My personal one is 2026. But I wouldn't think about moving my work computer to nvda, because I would still want to use Jaws, even if it is a few years.

That said, if your employers knew about nvda, they might. They might.

Let's hope they don't listen, because nvda, you know, the one thing about Jaws, and I don't know, I don't think NVDA works in this, but JAWS is great in the terms. In the way I use it in work terms is I need to connect to a vpn.

Yeah.

And that's why I have a professional version of it now.

Two things. One is there is a bit of a learning curve, I guess, with. With any screen reader.

But, yeah.

You know, because Jaws is so massive and there's so much it can do. There's a bit of a learning curve because you've loads of shortcuts and stuff to learn, but it's well worth it. Right. I remember you learning it and it was like, oh, my God, so many, so many things to remember. But actually it's there. There's a pattern to it, isn't there? And you.

There is, but you also also have to look at it this way. The updates that they've done to narrator are all. To the keyboard changes they've made with narrator are all basically JAWS keystrokes mirroring jaws. So narrator aren't going with, you know, this is the way. Well, they did kind of go, this is the way it should. We think it should operate. But. But because people are using now, they're.

Like, okay, Jaws, we've got it sussed.

They're now going the other way. So.

Yeah, so about complexity.

And here I'm going to talk a little bit about the design philosophy of Jaws. I'm pretty sure NVDA thinks this way as well, because NVDA can become very complicated. People think it's simple. NVDA is not simple. It is fairly complicated. Especially once you get into the really powerful stuff like plugins, it gets complicated. And the same goes for Jaws. So what Jaws does is it's very easy to start. You really only need a couple of keystrokes.

Yeah.

And you can get started.

Yeah.

But then it's almost like this pool that starts very shallow, and as you walk deeper into it, it gets deeper and deeper and deeper until you can do more. You know, you have to. You have to be able to swim in order to traverse it, but you can get quite far. And so.

That'S how we always design our features, where.

A user that gets Started with it should be able to use Jaws right from the get go. You won't know everything, but you will know enough to read your email to browse the web.

The other thing is we haven't talked about the one that Alexa is mentioning, which is Voiceover, which I wouldn't have even considered. But I guess. Does voiceover work on Apple Max or is it just on the.

You're just talking about voiceover on a phone or you're talking about. Again, it's like narrator. It's built in. So.

And I think because you're a Mac as well.

Sorry, that's what I meant. I meant on the Mac and iPads and.

On smartphones. But I think Voiceover like I'm using a Mac for my writing.

And I'm.

Using voiceover Screenwriter, you know, and I'm using. I'm using Voiceover really up class.

He's really in a celebrity already. I'm writing on the Mac.

I'm using. I'm using voiceover on the Mac for, for that, for. For that. And I have to say this, I absolutely hate that there's the Jaws. And I've said this over the years. I hate that you cannot get Jaws on Mac because voiceover on a Mac. Awful is fucking terrible. I don't. I love it. I love it on my. Using it on my phone. But when you're using it on an operating system to get to do rudimentary stuff and, and I suppose maybe this is my age as well. I don't want to learn.

No, it's not your age. You are actually very technical and more technical than your average. But it's not your age.

But I mean there are. So I think, I think Mohammed maybe was maybe I'm saying that. Saying this in wrong, but you might have it. But I think. No, I actually am. I'm sorry. Somebody else said to me. Somebody else said to me months ago, maybe about a year ago when I bought this Macintosh, they said voiceover needs to be thrown away and start from scratch again because they've done feck all to it.

Yeah.

Over, you know, since it was introduced on. And I'm just talking about on a. On a Mac, on iOS, on a Mac computer. It really is so, so backwards.

It's appalling.

It's really terrible.

And as a psyche who sometimes has to use your Mac occasionally it does not work for a site at all because it covers like about an eighth of the screen. So I have to turn it off in order to be able to see what you're looking at.

Oh, yeah, now I know that. I know there are people who love using voiceover on a Mac. That's for them and that's maybe what they've used all along, but maybe they.

Don'T know what they're missing.

Exactly. When you look at something like Jaws and what it has available on it, what features are there, you know.

It'S really hard to kind of justify and say, oh, yeah, voiceover on a Macintosh computer works really well. It's horrible to use, but it's fine on the phone. It's absolutely fine.

The iPhone works well.

But I really do wish. I know it'll never happen, but I do wish Jaws was available on Mac because I would pay whatever it costs to buy that and use it.

There you go. Bring that to your next meeting, guys.

Sure. Sure thing.

So, Alexa, I hope that answers your question. It'd be interesting to hear what your experience is going from NVDA to Jaws.

Anyway, we're gonna wrap up because we have run out of time. Time, that is it for this episode. 137. Thank you very much for listening. Remember, blind guys, shout out. Gmail is the email. And that is us. That is us for the year. We are taking a break for Christmas. We wish you a very, very happy.

Christmas and a peaceful Merry Christmas New Year.

And we will be back on January 15, 2026.

Okay.

It.

Exactly. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Bye.

Bye. Bye.

Bye.

Bye, everyone. Bye.