[access-uk] Open letter to John Godbur (was: RE: Accessible Set top box
- From: "Damon Rose" <damon.rose@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2010 09:35:54 +0100
hi John. I think I probably speak for others here when I say that this
kind of info is heartening and helps us understand what RNIB are doing
amid this acceleration of digital products and services. Thank you for
communicating to us and I hope to see more from you in the coming
months. Government are pushing the digital industry buttons quite
heavily and recognise what it could bring to end users. Blind people are
twelve years behind on this basic EPG access stuff and it seems the
community are getting a bit restless as video on demand and other
services start popping up.
Can you tell us a bit more about this chipset?
I'd be particularly interested to know what it does? Is it simply a
speech synthesizer? Or does it have more on board? How versatile is it?
And is it environmentally friendly?
I'm assuming RNIB doesn't give the chipset away for free to
manufacturers, so who distributes it, who sells it and how much would it
cost a manufacturer to a) purchase it and b) intergrate it into their
technology and physically weld it to their motherboards? Or maybe RNIB
does give it away for free? In which case it'd be interesting to hear
about the challenges of getting it included in boxes on that interesting
basis.
I'd like to hear a bit moore about why you chose to make and market a
chipset towrds manufacturers rather than an add-on aimed at blind
consumers. This will mean that manufacturers have to include the
accessible talking elements into every single box and hence dramatically
increase their costs. Will manufacturers be persuaded to do that? And
off the back of that, why did RNIB choose not to create a universal
speech box that could plug into the back of any hardware that has the
right software API? The latter would make end users foot the bill for
the accessibility and would avoid having to persuade manufacturers to
spend thousands on including the hardware in their boxes - which I
imagine is an incredibly hard task for which RNIB may not have the
resources to achieve.
If the answer to this is "we believe everyone should have equal access"
then I assume you must be some way down the line to getting government
to accept that legislation has to be the answer ... so that
manufacturers are forced to include your chipset or develop something
cost effective for themselves.
I believe that the Pure Sonus radio, a fantastic product, was
discontinued because they didn't sell as many as they hoped. If this
experience has coloured the general feeling in the consumer electronics
industry, then they wil have to be forced rather than persuaded. And as
digital technology takes off, with faster broadband promised soon, we
can only assume that we are going to lose out heavily if legislation
isn't passed sooner rather than later. So it'd be good to have an update
on campaigning and discussions around this.
Project Canvas boxes will be released next year and will have an API
that supports some kind of speech output by then (it's due to be
included in the next software rollout I believe). Do you have a partner
ready to roll out Canvas enabled boxes so that people who can't see the
screen at all are able to access iPlayer, 4OD and the other digital and
on demand services that will come as default on those boxes?
The really interesting thing about set-top boxes is that they play far
better to RNIB's core customer base - older people who aren't quite so
au fait with computers. An incredibly easy interfface can be achieved
with a set-top box in comparison to a computer, with services and
digital entertainment available. And it looks like RNIB understands this
as you are talking about having magazines delivered via set-top box. I'd
suggest that things like video phones built into the set-top box could
be far more empowering to all visually impaired people attempting to
live as independently as possible (video appointments with doctors,
asking family to look over clothing to see if it's clean, looking at
instruction on food or drugs from afar)
It'd be great to hear responses to this. From my discussions with
sources in the industry, I feel there are far more barriers than we, the
blind community, appreciate. It feels unnecessarily complicated. And I
should just add that if I can lend my support to a campaign towards
access legislation, I'd be more than willing to put in some time and
effort. I suspect a number of people here would be happy to do that too.
How about if RNIB were to give a 10 minute presentation on their work
towards a digital future and post it up on YouTube or as a podcast on
the popular Blind Cooll Tech blog? Or if there already is an RNIB blog
about this kind of thing, or someone else close to these projects, can
you point us at it?
I appreciate that people like us on these tech lists are pushing the
envelope and are more likely to be early adopters than older users. But
it is we who are using and testing things today that all blind consumers
could be using tomorrow ... we can see the benefits already.
And finally John, how high are your confidence levels on getting good
comprehensive access to set-top boxes and digital services in the living
room? Do you expect products to be on our TV sets within a year? Two
years? I'm remembering back to how audio description was being broadcast
for many years without anyone being able to pick it up. 12 years later,
there are a number of products out there ... I for one never expected it
to take so long or appear to be such a slog to achieve.
Appreciated.
...Damon
________________________________
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of JOHN
Sent: 30 June 2010 18:49
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [access-uk] Accessible Set top box
hello,
I do hope people will welcome the new settop box and some of you will
come
and see it at Sight Village along with several other innovative new
products from RNIB. It doesn't all stop with the Penfriend you know!
I thought it might be helpful to give you now as much of the background
to the development of the settop box as I can. So I apologise for the
length of this post.
There are three elements to our work on accessible TV.
First, RNIB has developed a chipset which can be used in any TV, settop
box, entertainment centre, DAB radio etc to make it speak. This chipset
is now available in the electronics industry and those of you who have
picked up the promotion from Ocean Blue can see an early example of
companies taking up our technology. Our intention, quite simply, is to
take away any barriers, actual or perceived, which put manufacturers off
designing speech output into new devices. By using our chipset they can,
if they choose, make all new TVs and boxes talk. Like all commercial
companies they will do this if either government legislation makes them
do it or if they believe there is a commercial opportunity.
The second element was for us to get our own box designed and built and
made available right now. Making the chipset available to manufacturers
doesn't actually guarantee that anybody will make a box. So we've done
it ourselves with Goodmans. The box will be available in the high street
as well as from RNIB. We provide accessible instructions of course and
we suspect that many high street stores won't want the administrative
hassle of dealing with VAT exemption forms. But it's just up to you
where you want to buy it! It's your choice.
We hope that it will also feature in the government Help scheme for the
digital switchover. And, of course, if manufacturers do start to pick
up on accessibility in the mainstream there will be new products at
lower prices and with better functionality round the corner so, just
like everybody else, it will be almost impossible to know when will be
the right time to buy a box because the day after you take the plunge
somebody will advertise one twice as good for half the price. but that's
just life!
The third element was to make technology which manufacturers and
broadcast distributors (like Sky and Virgin) could use to make an add-on
box to make their existing set top boxes talk without having to roll out
whole new boxes. . Again it is up to those companies to decide just how
they implement their own solutions. What we have done is make it
possible for them and other manufacturers to offer accessible products
at very low additional cost.
So we will continue to work with and apply pressure to companies to
bring out more accessible products as soon as possible. However nothing
works better than individual blind people contacting companies and
saying clearly why accessibility is so important.
We will also be developing a PVR with recording capabilities ourselves
which we intend will also be able to recieve our magazines, newspapers
and books for download too. But I can't right now give you an accurate
date for that to be ready.
As you may imagine it is difficult to get it right when it comes to
sharing information about things in development. It is so easy to raise
expectations only to disappoint customers because something has slipped
in the schedule or problems that weren't anticipated have come up.
So I am being as open about what we are doing and why as I think makes
most sense now. I won't put a blow by blow account on this list to
monitor progress over the next few months. I just hope that based on the
information above and on you seeing developments like the Penfriend that
you will trust the folks here in RNIB Products are definitely on your
side and working as hard as we can to remove barriers and make life that
bit more accessible for us all. We're just as mad as the rest of you
that sometimes things which seem so straightforward and obvious take so
long to become real.
With good wishes,
John Godber
Head of Products and Publications
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
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