Sight and Sound Technology Podcast

On this episode Stuart meets the insporational 16-year-old Nathon Proudfoot, who has invented his very own low vision device called the nathon 14. We also have information about a very interesting webinar hosted by the UK Association for Accessible Formats (UKAAF) on March 21st.

The popular Sight Village assistive technology show is kicking off for 2024 by visiting Blackpool on Tuesday 9th April, at the Winter Gardens, from 09:30 am to 3:30 pm. Stuart is joined by Rose Woodall from QAC to give us all the details.

Welcome to the 80th episode of our podcast, which coincidentally enough marks our Christmas 2023 programme. Speaking of Christmas, you may not be aware that Santa has some amazing offers on a range of hardware from our partners in Kapsys, Envision, WeWalk, Vispero and Hims, and Stuart has all the details. We report from a recent Employer Engagement event, held in Dublin, by Irish Guide Dogs for th...

The Cadence tablet from Tactile Engineering is a pocket-sized device (about the size of a large mobile phone) with 48 cells of 8-dot refreshable Braille, in four lines of 12 cells each. Connecting four tablets into a desktop quartet provides eight lines of 24 cells each. The tablet features Perkins keys, a directional pad for navigation and control, and seven multi-use keys for selecting lines, ac...

The ever popular Sight Village South-East event is returning to Kensington Town Hall on Tuesday 7th November. Doors open at 10:00 am and the event runs until 5:00 pm. Stuart is joined by Paul Hopkins and Rose Woodall from QAC to tell us all about it.

We're delighted to mark National Braille week by having a reflective chat with Matthew Horspool. Matthew’s career started in a school for the blind, where he worked as a Braille transcriber and teacher of technical Braille codes. He has been formally involved with the Braillists Foundation since it was registered as a charity in 2020 and took up the post of General Manager in 2021. He is also Brai...

If you've ever had an idea for a feature in JAWS, Zoomtext or Fusion, this could be your big chance to shine and get your idea out there! Vispero have just launched their 'Next Big Thing' contest, running until October 16th. All you have to do is create a three-minute video presentation outlining your software feature idea. Stuart is joined on this episode by Ryan Jones, Vice President of software...

Paul Ryb lost his central vision in 2007, but his life changed when he gave blind tennis a go at a sports hall in Wimbledon. Last week, he was amongst a select few invited to return to Wimbledon, not to that sports hall, but to the most famous tennis court in the world, to play an exhibition match. As he prepares for the World Blind Games in Birmingham, followed by the World tennis championships i...

We've just returned from this year's Sight Village Central event in Birmingham, and, at that event, we were delighted to unveil our new partnership with WeWALK. WeWALK aims to Enhance the mobility of visually impaired people through a revolutionary smart cane and smartphone app. The WeWALK cane detects above-ground obstacles with ultrasound while still retaining the standard white cane’s ground fe...

Matthew Horspool is a familiar voice and a familiar name for his various activities in the blind and low vision community. Stuart caught up with Matthew, in his capacity as General Manager of the Braillists Foundation to find out more about the charity and the work they do.

Saima Ashraf, from Blackburn, is a senior auditor at Merseyside Police, breaking down stereotypes of what a visually impaired person can do. Stuart caught up with Saima at a very busy Sight village for a quick chat.

Since the launch of their smart glasses a couple of years ago, Envision have been changing the way that people with low or no vision see the world around them. With the recent explosion of Chat GPT and AI in general, Envision have been working hard to make sure that this new and exciting technology is at the heart of their own tools and we can already see the benefits in recent software upgrades....

We're continuing our countdown to Sight Village Central 2023 and meeting some of the great partners that we have the pleasure of representing across the UK and Ireland. First up, Stuart is checking in with an old friend. Between releasing their new SensePlayer device earlier this year, and working on a major update to the BrailleSense 6, Selvas Healthcare, the parent company of Hims, based in Sout...

We're counting down to the biggest annual assistive technology exhibition in the UK. Sight Village Central takes place this year in a brand new location, at Eastside Rooms, 2 Woodcock Street, in Birmingham, on Monday 17th and Tuesday 18th of July. In the first of our Sight Village countdown series, Stuart is joined by our Head of Sales and Marketing Stefanie Davies, to tell us what we can expect i...

Sight Village has become a favourite event in many of our calendars over the years. The organisers at Queen Alexandra College are always innovating to make the events bigger and better and, there's always something new and exciting to be found. On this episode Stuart chats with Paul Hopkins, from Queen Alexandra College to find out all about this year's Sight Village calendar of events, including...

Nick Alsbury is the newest member of our field sales team. Stuart sits down with Nick to get to know him and hear about his previous media career!

Welcome and happy new year from all at Sight and Sound Technology. Our podcast returns for a new year with an exciting new addition. We have introduced podcast transcripts starting with this episode. We hope this will be of use to our deafblind friends, and also to anyone who simply wants to quickly find content without having to listen to the show. Please let us know if this feature is helpful. O...

Ruth Gallagher-Carr is one half of the duo behind the hugely successful Getting AT Ready conference, which she developed alongside her colleague Carolyne Smith. She's also been responsible for building a thriving presence for Sight and Sound Technology in Scotland, and, for working as part of a team to develop a robust quality management system in the company. As Ruth prepares to move to the next...

Wednesday 4th January is World Braille Day, and we’re delighted to announce details of a half-day online conference that we’re putting together in association with our friends at the Braillists Foundation. This podcast episode is somewhat different to our regular output, in that we have a guest host in the wonderful Steven Scott, host of the DoubleTap podcast, who has kindly taken the show into hi...

We're just back from a hugely successful Sight Village event, and it was wonderful to return to Kensington Town Hall, in the heart of London. On this episode Stuart catches up at the event with Rob Powell, who tells us about the Jubilee Club Magazine, and Freek van Welsenis, co-founder of the company who have brought us the revolutionary Hable One device.

The SmartVision 3, the only Google certified smartphone designed specifically for people with low or no vision has recently joined our product portfolio. This handset, which integrates Google's Talkback screen reader, offers three ways to control your smartphone and access information, including a tactile keypad. Stuart caught up with Tony Shrubb from our field sales team to find out all about it.

Roger Firman is chair of UKAAF, the UK Association for Accessible Formats. Until June of this year, when he retired, he ran his own company called Golden Chord, dedicated to providing a high-quality personalised transcription service for customers who require music, music-related and other materials in braille. Roger is a life-long user of Braille and is passionate about its application in all are...

Remote Incident Manager (RIM), the latest exciting software release from Pneuma Solutions, is a fully accessible remote desktop application for technical support, training, and simply helping friends and family with their PCs. We had so much fun with founders Mike Calvo and Matt Campbell last time that we invited them back to hang out with Stuart and tell him all about this revolutionary applicati...

Sam Coulson will have been a very familiar voice if you attended our Social Hub and other Sight and Sound Technology webinars in the early days of lockdown. Sam left Sight and Sound Technology in August 2021 to pursue his acting career, but last week he made a welcome return and he’s popped into catch up with Stuart and tell him what he’s been up to since hanging up his assistive technology sales...

Our podcast returns after a short summer break, and this time we have a new member of the Sight and Sound team to meet! Stefanie Davies has recently joined as Marketing Manager. Stuart catches up with Stefanie to find out about her and her role at Sight and Sound Technology.