Interviews with CSUN Exhibitors

Brian takes a walk around the CSUN exhibition hall and interviews a number of company representatives manufacturing interesting products.

Announcement of Audio Interviews Feature

Unusually, this is a text post rather than an audio one, written by Brian Hartgen.

 

Well cSUN is now over and later this afternoon I will fly back to L A. It was great to meet so many people who visited our booth to learn about our products, and I was demonstrating them almost until the end of the third day.

 

I did find a couple of hours on the Saturday morning to carry out some interviews with representatives of other companies which I hope people will find interesting. In the afternoon, I recorded in our booth some narration to surround the interviews, and it should all edit together very well into a programme. I will produce this on Tuesday and upload it. I tried to focus upon some of the new products from technology companies, and I suspect it will edit down into a 50 to 55 minute programme.

 

So that is to come later this week and I hope you enjoy it.

Close of Friday

Brian and terry talk about new products at CSUN, together with Say-MAGic for low vision computer users.

Freedom Scientific General Session

Brian introduces and records the Freedom Scientific General Session and talks about the ongoing presentations at the Hilton Hotel being delivered by the company.

Close of Thursday

Terry Tracey an Tracey chat to you from the hotel bar after a long day, reflect on the day, look forward to Brian’s posts and sample the local beverage delights.

Dolphin Scripting

We bring you a fascinating presentation from Dolphin Computer Access as they reveal a new scripting language which forms part of version 9 of their product range.

Early Thursday

Terry chats from the T&T Consultancy booth around an hour into the start of this year’s exhibits.

Arrival In L A

As Terry arrives in L A ready for CSUN, we hear from him albeit a little jet lagged!

Official Australian Opening

Terry discusses with Scott ahead of the opening of the new Australian offices, we have the official opening itself and audience reactions.

Tuesday Morning

Terry talks from the hotel room on Tuesday morning prior to opening the new offices in Australia.

UK Office Opening

 

    

Brian took a recording of the opening of the new prestigious UK offices. The first segment was recorded outside the new training suite. The second part was recorded inside the training area, comprising a large room with projector, conference audio speakers, and many work space areas for people to use computers when being trained.

Sydney Introduction

Scott and Terry re-launch the Podcast, discuss what is to come and give details of the new Australian company from T&T.

 

Battle of the Blindness PDA’s

In this post You can hear a debate we delivered at the Techshare international conference of 2007, concerning the Pac Mate from Freedom Scientific and the Braille Note from Humanware.

Sight Village Contents and Product Status

In this post we give you the contents of the latest release of Infotech and talk about the status of our new products.

A Surprise!

In this post we continue to reflect on Sight Village, talk about the future of the Blog, and we have a little surprise for you!

Unified english Braille

This presentation concerning Unified English Braille.

Dancing Dots Again!

Another Dancing Dots presentation recorded by Matthew Horspool.

Dancing Dots Presentation

Bill McCann demonstrates products from Dancing Dots

Victor Reader Stream Presentation

This is Humanware’s presentation concerning the Victor reader Stream.

Pac Mate Omni Presentation

This is Jonathan Mosen’s presentation concerning the Pac Mate Omni

Travelling Back

Travelling back from Sight Village, Brian talks about the high points of the event for him.

Start of Thursday

General discussion in the T&T room at the start of Thursday.

Freedom Scientific Seminar

Eric Damery presents a seminar relating to JAWS for Windows, focusing upon the support for Windows Vista.

K-Sonar Seminar

The K-Sonar mobility aid was launched on Tuesday. This is the launch seminar.

Travelling to Sight Village

Terry travels to Sight Village on Wednesday.

GW Micro Seminar

GW Micro deliver a presentation concerning Window-Eyes and the Small Talk Ultra.

Smart Phone or PDA, which one for me!

This is the Dolphin seminar from Dave Williams concerning PDA’s and Smart Phones.

Chat with Fiona Dunn

Fiona Dunn is a member of the public who dropped by our room at Sight Village to talk to us about how she has found the event to be so far.

Discussion with wil Lomas

Wil Lomas talks about what he’s looking forward to seeing when he visits Sight this coming Wednesday.

One day and counting!

Terry and Brian chat from the T&T office during the last minute preparations for this years event.

Discussion with Sean Farrow

Terry talks with sean Farrow who is ixtremely interested in technology concerning his thoughts of Sight Village. In the past and what he is looking forward to this year.

It’s That Man Again!

Steve Nutt of Computer Room Services discusses with Brian his plan for this year’s Sight Village event.

Reflections

Terry offers reflections of last year’s Sight Village and looks forward to this year’s excellent event.

Discussion with Matthew Horspool

Matthew Horspool, one of the voices behind the newly established ViTech Podcast, talks with Brian about his previous experiences of Sight Village and which exhibitors interest him this year.

Products from Dräger & Lienert

The blog has received the following from the company Dräger & Lienert.

 

At SightVillage in Birmingham (17th to 19th July) we will show two new members of the Tag It family.

 

Tag It Guide is an in door navigation system for buildings. The system also can be used in museums to link objects with audio information.

 

Tag It Media lets people without any computer knowledge access information such as internet radio, podcasts and more.

 

MAX - The DaisyMaker turns information automatically into daisy. Learn and listen with a mobile daisy player while walking through a forest.

 

Tag It has many new features. There is an interface available between Tag It an MileStone.

 

We are looking forward to meeting you at booth D5.

 

T&T Consultancy Ltd to Deliver Presentation to the British Computer Association of the Blind Dureing Sight Village Plus

 

For the second consecutive year, T&T Consultancy Ltd are delighted to be delivering a presentation at the Annual General Meeting of the British Computer Association of the Blind. BCAB’s Sight Village Plus annual event allows its members to experience the huge variety of products being exhibited at the Sight village exhibition and, on the following day, take advantage of a themed presentation relating to a topical issue of benefit to technology enthusiasts and professionals who work with it.

 

In 2006, we presented a seminar concerning portable media devices, podcasting and blogs. This year, we take the challenge of delivering a presentation relating to the new Windows Vista operating system and Office 2007. We are delighted to be presenting a seminar to BCAB during this well-known annual event.

During the Friday morning, the presentation will include:

• How Windows Vista differs from Windows XP. This is a substantial topic but will be presented to give people a very useful introduction to how to quickly get to grips with the new operating system and its advantages.
• How effectively visually impaired people can access Windows Vista using screen-reading technology with JAWS for Windows, Window-Eyes, Hal and System Access.
• Accessibility facilities built into the operating system which are of benefit to visually impaired people.
• Vista Speech Recognition technology including reference to our J-Vist product.
• An overview of Office 2007 including how one can make the transition from an earlier release of the product.
  

Terry in Australia!

Terry has been in Australia this week on business.

He takes time out to talk with Scott Erichsen about T&~T’s two new products to be launched at sight, about things Scott would look at if he was at the show, as well as towards the end take a little musical break.

Thank goodness he doesn’t try to talk like an ausie!!

New Feed for Podcast

Unfortunately, we needed to change the feed people will use to subscribe to the Podcast. The audio files were taking hours to filter through to Podcatchers such as Juice and iTunes which was just unacceptable for Sight Village.

 

The new feed is now as follows:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/tandt

Early reports suggest this is working very well.

Useful Links

We are aware that there are now a number of subscribers to the Blog and Podcast, some of whom are joining us from outside the UK and you are very welcome. We thought the following links may be helpful.

 

Sight Village is the largest exhibition of equipment and services for people with a visual impairment in Europe, taking place on 17^th through to 19^th July. It is attended by many worldwide company representatives and thousands of visually impaired people. This link will take you to an alphabetical list of exhibitors, courtesy of the Describe On-Line web site who produce the text guide to Sight Village. Do look around the site as it is full of useful information concerning the event including exhibitor details and seminars.

 

Sight Village is hosted by the Queen Alexandra College, Birmingham.

 

The upcoming edition of our Infotech magazine contains a short preview of some of the exciting new products exhibitors will be demonstrating.

 

Our Sight Village page will let you know how to get involved with the blog and podcast if you wish to do that.

 

If you wish to visit us at Sight Village, we are located within Room G3.

Comments from David Bates

The following comments were submitted by David Bates, a subscriber to our Blog, which he sent through by Email.

 

I have been a computer user since 1990 but in 1998 I lost the ability to read, and purchased a copy of JAWS, for both business and home use.

In my business I was used to staffing an exhibition stand and talking to trade buyers who had prepared themselves before handso that they could appraise the products on offer very quickly.

I therefore find the organisation of ‘Sight Village’ very frustrating and unprofessional.

Because I am now blind I cannot browse for interesting products, I cannot refer to the catalogue as I walk around, and I cannot even obtain details of new products a week or two beforehand so that I can prepare for my visit. I have therefore given up visiting the exhibition and instead send for the CD afterwards.

I get the impression that Sight Village is organised principally for Social Workers and university researchers, although I expect that some exhibitors are seeking visually impaired custommers who are actually prepared to buy their products.

If it was considered desirable, this exhibition could be marketted easily to visually impaired customers by sending a master tape or CD to all relevant associations and talking newspapers, containing a 40 - 60 second audio piece from each exhibitor giving product details, Company name, phone number and stand number. If a copy of this could reach most visually impaired people by early June, they could phone relevant exhibitors for further details of products of interest, and then perhaps choose to visit the supplier’s stand to examine the product.

It is likely that most of the voluntary newstape organisations would co-operate, and the most likely problem would be congestion caused by too many visually impaired visitors attending the exhibition, perhaps requiring a move to a larger venue in future years.

 

End of Comments

First Post regarding Sight Villlage 2007

 

Brian and Terry give you a preview of what is to come within the Sight Village 2007 Blog and Podcast.

End of CSUN

Final comments from the CSUN 2007 presentation.  We hope you have enjoyed reading the Blog and downloading the material from it.

Close of Presentation

Comments from Terry immediately following the presentation.

 

Emerging Technologies Presentation

A presentation concerning voice input, output and magnification technologies from Glenn Smith of adaptive C.

 

Close of the Day

Close of the day at CSUN from the HumanWare party round the pool of the hotel.

The Future of the Pac Mate

A fascinating presentation by Jonathan Mosen and Ron Miller from Freedom Scientific regarding current development of the Pacmate and a glance to the future.

GW Micro and Office 2007

A presentation focusing on the use of windoweyes version 6.1 with Office 2007. Most interestingly the use of the Outlook Calendar where GW take a very different approach to other screenreaders!

Chat with Musical Accompaniment

general chat from the lobby while shopan plays his heart out.

Close of Thursday

A chat from the hotel lobby, an exploration of how lifts inform blind people of the floor you are on, and other stuff.

J-Say and the Internet

A recording of a fascinating presentation delivered by Sue Martin and Ed Rosenthal about J-Say technology and the internet.

Dennys Diner

A chat from the famous restaurant chatting about our recent J-Say presentation among other things.

Final Wednesday Comments from the Bar!

Final comments on Wednesday take place in the Bar!

Humanware Presentation

This presentation, just over fifty minutes in length, is from Humanware, which again took place on the Wednesday.

General Dolphin comments

Terry briefly discusses the previous presentation from Dolphin.

Dolphin Presentation

Steve Bennett and Mike Hill from Dolphin computer Access deliver a presentation concerning Windows Vista.

 

Talking about the Previous Two Days

In this new audio post to the Blog, Terry recaps on activities of the past two days and mentions presentations he hopes to record on Wednesday, the start of the CSUN General Sessions.

First Report from L A!

Terry Clasper sends his first report from Los Angeles for the CSUN 2007 Blog.

FreedomBox Seminar

Please listen to the Computer Room Services seminar relating to the FreedomBox.

 

RNIB Home Security

This is the final seminar David recorded relating to home security.

 

RNIB and Mobile Phones

Listen to this seminar from RNIB about mobile phone technology.

 

Various items from the start of day 2

The T&T Team talk about various items at the start of day 2. This post is not in the order of other posts since for some reason Juice did not pick up the original so we are trying again with this one.

 

GW Micro

Clarence Whaley of GW Micro presents his seminar concerning the upcoming features of Window-Eyes V6.

 

Final Thoughts

Terry gives his final thoughts following Sight Village.

Azabat Games

Brian’s daughter Kerri-Ann Hartgen buys some games from a company called Azabat.  These are games which speak all their prompts with the NeoSpeech voices.

 

Eric damery of Freedom Scientific

David Hartgen recorded the presentation delivered by Eric Damery of Freedom Scientific.  This took place at 1.30 PM on day 2.

 

General Chat from Day 3

In this general chat, Brian talks about the seminars of the previous day and his purchase of the Plextalk PTR2 at the RNIB stand.

 

Close of day 2

Terry tells us what has been happening during day 2 and what you can expect from the Podcast very soon.

 

Closing Comments after day 1

In this final item for day 1, Terry talks about the Key To Freedom and our activities for the day.

 

Humanware

Jonathan Mosen from Humanware is in conversation with Brian about the new and exciting products to view on their stand.

 

First Glance

Terry and Brian talk at the start of Sight Village.

British Computer association Of the Blind

Mike Townsend, Chair of BCAB, sent in his own post to the Podcast about BCAB special offers.

RNIB New Products

Brian talks about some information concerning new products at the RNIB stand.

 

Sight Village of the Past!

Terry takes a trip down memory lane and meanders through our in depth Sight Village coverage from 2003 to 2005.

 

Computer Room Services

In this interview, Brian Hartgen talks to Steve Nutt of Computer Room Services about their exciting plans for Sight Village.

 

Interview with Blazie UK from 2005

Finally from our Infotech Sight Village special from 2005, we bring you an interview with Sara Morgan from Blazie UK.

 

Interview with Software Express from 2005

Again taken from the 2005 Infotech Sight Village special, this is an interview with a representative from Software express.

 

Interview about Products from Portset Systems from 2005

This article from the Infotech 2005 Sight village special contains an interview with Graham Thomas of Portset Systems.

 

Sight Village Podcast Launch

Terry Clasper and Brian Hartgen talk using Skype about the purpose of the Podcast, web site and Blog, together with outlining the range of offerings at the T&T Consultancy Ltd room during Sight Village this year.

 

 

Welcome to the T&T Consultancy Ltd Sight Village Podcast and Blog

This year, T&T Consultancy Ltd are delighted to be offering a truly virtual interactive experience at this year’s Sight Village exhibition, taking place in Birmingham from 18-20 July inclusive, and, most importantly, it is a completely free service! 

 

Starting this weekend, we are launching a Podcast and Blog totally dedicated to the Sight Village exhibition.  As far as we know, this has never happened before.

 

First of all, the T&T Consultancy Blog and Podcast will provide people with up-to-the-minute information relating to the event.  The Podcast itself will we hope contain brief interviews with supplier representatives, highlighting what they have to offer, their stand or room location and other useful information. 

 

 In addition, the Sight Village page of our web site, available from our Latest News section, will contain photographs of the event.  Finally, our Blog available in conjunction with the Podcast will provide links to useful web resources and text-based news concerning Sight Village as and when we find it.

 

So the web site, Blog and Podcast is certainly something you will want to visit or subscribe to whether you are planning to visit Sight Village or not!  You will find frequent updates throughout the three days and before …

 

Why not join in the Podcast yourself!  If you are an exhibitor and you would like to say a few words beforehand to alert people to any new products or services you have, why not contact us and we can record a brief interview either by using the telephone or through skype.  Alternatively, if you are a member of the public and you feel you would like to talk about some of the things you are looking forward to seeing at the event, again do contact us and we can talk about that too.

 

Enjoy the Podcast and Blog!