In this episode, Shaun discusses artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential benefits for blind or visually impaired individuals. Showcasing the “Pi” AI service as a voice assistant that can answer questions, create emails, offer recommendations and much more.
In this episode, Shaun discusses artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential benefits for blind or visually impaired individuals. Showcasing the “Pi” AI service as a voice assistant that can answer questions, create emails, offer recommendations and much more.
Website: http://www.Pi.AI
- [Narrator] Shaun of the Shed, an AMI original podcast.
- Hello and welcome back to another episode of Shaun of the Shed. I am that Shaun. I am sat in a garden shed somewhere in the UK. I'm not telling you where it's top secret, stop it. And today I want to talk about artificial intelligence or as technology loves an acronym, AI. Why we as blind or visually impaired people should be excited by AI and we do need to know about and what it can do for us. So that's what I'm gonna do today. I'm gonna demo an AI service that I use, which I think is absolutely amazing. But before we get there, what is AI? What does it do? Well, there's a couple of things we should take into account here. Firstly, AI, at a basic level is pretty much the same as your voice assistant on your smartphone or your smart speaker. You can ask it questions and it will answer you. It can also help you, you know, create emails or letters. You can ask it to give you ideas for creative things, creative projects. It is basically an assistant, but on a whole nother level to what we've used so far. And secondly is the way that we use AI. If you think about how we interact with technology right now, you know, how do you use your computer, your laptop, for example, a keyboard, right? Or a mouse or a touch pad or your smartphone. Now that's all fine, but it's still a barrier between me as the user and getting the technology to do what I want it to do. The magic of AI is that I don't need to worry about that anymore. All I need to do is ask the AI for what I want and it will understand me. It understands the context. It doesn't matter if I fall over a word halfway through, it doesn't matter if I phrase it wrongly like I just did. It's as close as I've ever come to as the perfect interface, if you like, for technology. The technology almost fades into the background. You forget it's not perfect, but by God it's close. There's various different AI services out there. There's Microsoft's Copilot, which is built into Windows, Google's Gemini. There's ChatGPT from Open AI. But the one I wanna show you, and my favorite by far is something called Pi, just P-I. It's by a developer called Inflection. And I find that I'm using it every single day. Let's just jump straight into it. To get PI for your smartphone, you'll need to search for Pi space AI in your smartphone's app store. When you open up the app for the first time, this is where we will hit the first accessibility issue. It's not a showstopper, but it is annoying. And that is, there are a few screens here that are unaccessible using a screen reader, either voiceover or TalkBack. Now on the iPhone you would have that page navigation at the bottom of the screen. You can put focus on that and it will say page one of three, for example. Simply keep swiping up to progress through the pages. And then when you get to the end, you'll find there is a start button. Once we're into the Pi app, you can either start using it straight away or create an account. The benefit of creating an account is that it will then remember all your conversations. So if you have a conversation about a certain topic in the past and then the next day have another, it can refer back and pick information from that. So I would suggest create an account. There are two different ways in which you can use Pi. The default screen is just like any other text messaging screen. There's a text field at the bottom. You type in your question and hit send. And then above that is your conversation list with the PI responses and your questions all in line. The way that I use Pi is the second method, and that is by talking to it using my voice and having it talk back to me. And that is called Call with Pi, C-A-L-L. So I'm just gonna jump straight into my copy of Pi I've got running here and I'm gonna show you how I start a call with Pi and see what it can do. So when you are first in the Talk to Pi screen, you'll hear.
- [Speaker] Text field is editing character mode, insertion pointed start
- Already for you to type your question. I'm not gonna do that. Let's swipe to the right.
- [Speaker] Talk with Pi.
- Talk with Pi, again, that's the mode we're currently in. Swipe again.
- [Speaker] Call underscore 24 button.
- That's what I want to do. Now I'm actually gonna mute my speech here by double tapping with three fingers.
- [Speaker] Speech off.
- 'Cause I don't need it in the next bit. And now when I double tap on this button, we're gonna start a voice conversation. Hello Pi, what can you do?
- [Speaker] Hi there, I'm Pi, a friendly AI designed to help you with a wide range of tasks. Here are just a few things I can do. Answer questions on almost any topic. Offer personalized recommendations for movies, books, music, restaurants, and more. Engage in interesting conversations about almost anything you can think of. So tell me what would you like to know or do today?
- Let's start by questions I would ask my normal smart speaker. Do I need an umbrella today in Manchester?
- [Speaker] You'll definitely want to grab an umbrella if you're headed out in Manchester Today. The weather forecast is calling for rain with temperatures ranging from 42 to 56 degree Fahrenheit.
- Thank you. How did Manchester United do in their last match?
- [Speaker] Manchester United's last match was a bit of a rollercoaster. They managed to salvage a two two draw against Bournemouth yesterday, thanks to a brace from Bruno Fernandez. While the result prevented a loss, it wasn't exactly the outcome United was hoping for.
- Perfect. Can you help me draft an email to my boss, Mr. F, asking for a new laptop because my current one is so slow?
- [Speaker] Absolutely. Here's a draft email you could send to Mr. F asking for a new laptop. Dear Mr. F, I'm writing to request a new laptop for my work duties. Unfortunately, my current laptop has become quite slow. The sluggish performance is causing delays in completing tasks. A newer and faster laptop would greatly improve my ability to complete tasks in a timely manner. Thank you for your time and attention, your name.
- That's very good, but can you try again and make it very, very funny?
- [Speaker] Here's a humorous take on the email to Mr. F. Hey Mr. F, I'm writing to request a new laptop because frankly my current one moves slower than a snail on a treadmill. I've tried everything to speed it up, giving it pep talks, offering it coffee, but nothing seems to work. I think it's time we put this old laptop out to pasture and bringing a new shiny model that can actually keep up with my lightning fast typing skills. Please let me know what I need to do to make this happen. In the meantime, I'll be over here practicing my snail wrangling skills just in case I need a backup plan.
- Ah, that was very good. I like that one, well done.
- [Speaker] Glad to hear you enjoyed it.
- Absolutely. Okay, how about this? Can you suggest any keyboards for me? I need a new keyboard. Bear in mind, I'm blind. Does that make a difference
- [Speaker] For someone who is blind, a keyboard with distinct key shapes, tactile feedback and other accessibility features can be very helpful. Here are a few keyboards you might want to consider. Logitech K 780 multi-device wireless keyboard. This keyboard has concave keys that can help guide your fingers to the correct positions. Ablenet big keys LX keyboard designed specifically for people with visual impairments. This keyboard features oversized color coded keys that can make typing easier. IBM accessibility keyboard. With distinct key shapes and sizes, this keyboard can assist touch typist and is also spill resistant keys.
- Very good, thank you. Now can you tell me what's the latest version of NVDA? The screen reader.
- [Speaker] NVDA 24.1 includes several new features and enhancements such as improved support for Microsoft Edge, better handling of area roles and properties, and the ability to announce progress bars and spinners.
- What about the new feature called on demand speech mode?
- This is a pretty exciting feature for screen reader users. Essentially, when this mode is enabled, NVDA won't automatically speak as you navigate EG, when moving the cursor, but it will still speak when you use commands that are meant to provide specific information like reporting the current window title. This new mode can be really useful in situations where you want to control when NVDA speaks and when it stays silent.
- I'm using it right now. That's perfect, thank you. Can you tell me what the keyboard shortcut is to turn on the screen curtain in NVDA,
- [Speaker] The keyboard shortcut to toggle the screen curtain in NVDA is a bit of a sequence, but here are the steps. One press N-V-D-A-N to open the NVDA menu, two, press P for preferences, three, press in for input gestures, four, press VI to jump to the vision options, five, press right arrow to open the vision options, six, press t or down arrow to toggle the state of the screen curtain.
- How do I turn the screen curtain off and on in JAWS.
- [Speaker] In JAWS, the keyboard shortcut to turn the screen curtain on and off is insert space F11. So to turn the screen curtain on, press insert space F11 and to turn it off again, just repeat the same keyboard combination. And here's a fun fact. The JAWS screen curtain feature was actually inspired by a real life tool called a sleep shade or sleep mask that people who are blind or visually impaired can use to block out light when they're trying to sleep. Pretty nifty, right?
- Very good. Thanks a lot for your help. I'm gonna go now.
- [Speaker] It was great chatting with you and helping out with your screen reader queries. Have a wonderful day.
- So there you go. That's the basics of Pi and AI actually. Now I didn't go into specifics and show you each aspect of the interface there because it's currently being worked on and updated all the time. So the chances are it may be different by the time you actually get to use it yourselves, but the general layout that I gave you there is more than enough. And as I said, I use it every day and I simply ask Siri to open Pi and then swipe to the right twice to get to that call button and then turn speech off and just have a conversation. It is always so impressive. It's so easy to use, so responsive as you heard and just so useful. Now put a few caveats here because it's not always right and this is not just a problem with Pi. This is AI in general. It's so impressive the way it understands the questions and how you talk to it and how it responds that it's easy to get over confident with it and trust it too much. There's lots of times where it will give you information that may not be true and you do need to double check that and always keep that in mind. Don't rely on it too much. Take it all with a pinch of salt and be very aware that AI is not always correct. So that's Pi, my current favorite thing in the world. I absolutely love it. Again, you could even check out the website. That's pi.ai. Let me know how you get on with Pi, if you try it out. And thank you so much for listening. If you want to hear more, you can hear me and Steven Scott every day, at least every weekday, on AMI audio or your favorite podcast app, just search for double tap or why not check out Access Tech Live here on YouTube with Steven and Marc Aflalo for breaking Tech News. And there's also double tap video here on YouTube. Me and Steven having tech fueled conversations. Check us all out. Thank you so much. If you like this, please like and subscribe and I will see you next time. Take care.