Tuesday 20 May 2014

Talking Tech for May 20 2014

Catching Up With Other Stories Not Covered In Talking Tech 

 

My Twitter feed is where I favourite all of the stories that I may or may not cover during the Talking Tech program for the week.  You can use my Twitter feed favorites to see what all the stories I have been collecting. 

 

https://twitter.com/favorites 

 

Global Access Day

 

Global Access Day May Have Been Last Week, but here Are Ten Things You Can Still DO - From Media Access Australia.

 

http://www.mediaaccess.org.au/latest_news/digital-technology/global-accessibility-awareness-day-10-things-everyone-can-do-to-improve-access-to-media 

I just picked their top 5 and generalised a little bit.

1. Make links on webpages meaningful.

2. Transcribe your podcas.

3. Provide captioning for video content.

4. Provide audio description for video content.

5. Have a go at the inbuilt accessibility options found in most operating systems for desktop and mobile. 

 

My Podcast Of The RIVO Keyboard from Mobience 

 

I mentioned in the show last week that I was going to do a demo of the RIVO keyboard, so here is the direct link to the audio demo. 

 

http://s39.podbean.com/pb/eba37e5eefddba081be847b3ed29c4c9/537a8760/data2/blogs24/339150/uploads/DemoofUsingtheRIVOBTKeyboardwithVoiceOverontheiPhone.mp3 

Here is the Mobience website again for your info. 

 

http://www.mobience.com/rivo/index_en.html 

 

New Remote Access in BlindSquare 

 

Great new feature in accessing the BlindSquare GPS app from ear phones that have the clicker for Play/Pause, Previous, and Next. If you press Play, you will start going through various options including Location, Sleep Mode, Look Around, Around me, Start Tracking, GPS Info, Time, add Place, and Weather.  Pressing Play on one of these options selects it, and in some cases deselects it: e.g. such as Sleep Mode toggle. If you also press the Play button twice and hold, this extends the area around you for BlindSquare to search, and press the Play button 3 times and holding decreases the area. 

 

Some other new features include Weather as above in the remote function: also to be found in Tools.  You can also share your current or simulated location with other people as well.  The button above your Home button also cycles between compass heading, speed, and GPS accuracy. 

 

Here is a podcast from applevis.com going through BlindSquare plus the new features. 

 

http://www.applevis.com/sites/default/files/podcasts/AppleVisPodcast562.mp3 

 

Here is the BlindSquare link in the App Store: 

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/blindsquare/id500557255?mt=8 

 

A Couple Of Announcements From Apple 

 

OS X 10.9.3 Officially Released, iTunes 11.2 released, and Podcasts for iOS released as well. 

 

If you have not yet got the update to 10.9.3, in the App Store app from the Dock, choose check for Updates with Command+5. If you haven't got the Apple Podcast app yet, here is the link: 

 

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/podcasts/id525463029?mt=8 

 

My two take away points from these releases is that both iTunes and the podcasts app can stream podcasts rather than having to download them.  In addition, you can get Siri to play a podcast by saying “play podcast name”. 

 

Transcribing Recorded Audio To Text Using the Mac 

 

I came across this great tip for using the Mac’s inbuilt dictation feature to transcribe recorded audio (such as a meeting, instructions etc) in to text using a utility called Sound Flower which allows you to pipe audio from one application to another on the Mac. Here is how you do it.

 

1. Download and Install Sound Flower.

2. In System Preferences Dictation and Speech, change the Microphone to Sound  Flower 2ch (which just stands for 2 channels).  So in effect, we’re recording the output of Sound Flower rather than a microphone listening to our voice directly dictate.

3. In your favourite recording app for the Mac such as Audacity or Amadeus Pro, change your output to Sound Flower 2ch.  So in effect, we’re sending the audio we are about to play out to Sound Flower which will then be picked up by the Macs dictation function.

4. Open a text editing application on your Mac such as TextEditt.  This is what we will be using to capture  dictation.

5. Now open up an audio file in your recording application, and start playing,.  You want here anything as the audio output is going to Sound Flower.

6. Jump back to TextEdit, press the FN key twice to start dictation, the audio now coming out of the recording application will now be being translated in to text in TextEdit.

7. For sighted people, when you stop seeing new text appear, you know the audio has finished as which point you can press the FN key again.  For folks using VoiceOver, I usually determine how long the audio file will be playing, and set a timer: so when the timer is up, just press the FN key.Its

 

sounds like a lot of work, but when your actually doing it, it is quite straightforward. All you are doing is sending the output of your recording app via Sound  Flower to the Macs inbuilt dictation function. Sound Flower 

 

Here is the link to Sound Flower: 

 

http://soundflower.en.softonic.com/mac Amadeus Pro 

Here is the link in the Mac App Store to Amadeus Pro which is the recording app that I use: 

 

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/amadeus-pro/id438292371?mt=12

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