- Hello, hello, hello, welcome back to "Double Tap" on YouTube. I am Steven Scott. - And I am Shaun Preece, hello. - How dare you? - What, what, sorry, I thought you were waiting for me to intro myself, sorry. Have I overstepped a mark? - No, I was just saying, how dare you, how dare you be Shaun Preece? - Oh, I see. - Of all the people you could have been, you chose to be him? - It wasn't my choice, believe me. It just happened. - Hey, listen, everyone is talking about the Apple Vision Pro, right? Everyone's like, "Oh, the Apple Vision Pro is coming out February 2nd, oh, oh, oh," and so on and so forth, but- - A man of a thousand voices, our Steven Scott. - Most of 'em are just high-pitched, though, high-pitched, terrible. It's funny that the worst accent I can do is when I try to be Scottish. - Scottish. - And why is that? When I try to be Scottish, which I am, by the way. Someone had to argue with me recently, saying, "I don't think you are Scottish." And I'm like, "What?" - There's no true Scotsman. We all know that. - Well, I don't know what that means, but if it's offensive, then I take offense, thank you. But no, honestly, I don't know where it came from. People just think that, you know, I don't know, maybe my accent has just changed over the years. - It's mellowed. - I have no idea. I'm not who I thought I was! - Another voice, great. So yes, carry on. - Anyway, yeah, so while everyone's all excited about the Apple Vision Pro, I wanna talk about- - What? - Oh, sorry, I was being the excited person. - You all right? Oh, sorry, right. - Not now. - Okay, I'll pretend I knew what you were talking about. So yeah, and while everyone's so excited about the Apple Vision Pro. What a double act we are. That's what we said, anyway. I thought we'd talk about what accessibility features are in it, because we do know a little bit about what is coming from the Apple Vision Pro in terms of accessibility, and I thought we'd maybe get into some of that today because, you know, it's one of those things, you know. This is a new product, a new category, and the one thing about Apple products that people might not realize, I mean, blind people, we know, but, you know, a lotta people might not realize that a lot of the products that Apple make are accessible to us. They've got accessibility features built right in. Whether it's vision-related, whether it's hearing-related, whether it's motion, physical, motor, whatever it is, they have some kind of accessibility feature that can make a difference to us, and the Vision Pro is no different, Shaun Preece. - It isn't. I'm guessing some people will be surprised, maybe, that we're actually interested in the Vision Pro as it is primarily a visual device, right? - Ah, well. That's a different conversation, I think. - Well, yeah, it's definitely a different conversation, but Apple, as you rightfully say, have got a great reputation when it comes to accessibility. And to be fair, they're not the only company that make their products accessible, but they have a great reputation. And when something is released, a new product is released by Apple, there's an expectation in our community, the visually impaired community, at least, that we're gonna be able to use it, and the Vision Pro is no different. - Well, that's right, and that's my point, really, is that we know the products that come out from Apple will have accessibility in them. Now, usability, that's another question, and whether we would want to buy this product is another question. I'm not sure about the Vision Pro yet. I think its potential is huge, but I think the potential comes from the apps themselves that will be on the device. I'm not entirely concerned about the hardware. I'm more concerned about the software that's on it because frankly, if there's nothing on there that I can use, you know, with all the best will in the world, a 200-inch TV is not really any good to me. Because nice as it sounds, you know, being able to watch a big, huge television in my living room without having to have a 200-inch TV in my living room sounds nice, but it doesn't really make any difference to me, I'm still not gonna be able to see it. So there's those kind of elements, those things at this early stage, the things they've been promoting that sound brilliant, and I totally get why people are excited about it. I'm not gonna poo-poo it, I think it's a great thing, but, you know, I'm blind, I don't have a use case for it, but there are things I could have a use case for. So for example, at the minute, we use apps like Be My Eyes, you might have heard about this, the app that helps us as blind people connect with the sighted people out there who are volunteering their time on this app. If you haven't downloaded the app and become a volunteer if you're sighted, then you absolutely should. If you're blind, you absolutely must have this app because it's just wonderful. It's free to use. If you're blind, you can connect with a sighted person. You know, you ever wonder if those socks are matching, or if that top is covered in gravy, Shaun? - Yes, I've changed my top. - To the conversation of five minutes ago. - Yes. - That's what Be My Eyes is about, right? It's about just connecting people who are sighted to say, "Look, can you help me with this?" You know, I remember the first time I really used Be My Eyes properly, I was in a card shop, I was buying a card for my wife. What happened to me was I was in the card shop, and I had previously bought my wife a birthday card which said, "Happy anniversary," on it. - Of course. - That was a little embarrassing. So, you know, I didn't wanna do that again, so I'd gone into the store, I had spent some time going through all the different cards and used Be My Eyes, and the person who was with me was able to see the card, read the card, she would tell me a bit about the images, the pictures on the card, and we were able to find a really nice one that my wife liked, and that was it. And basically, what I'm saying is I got into the good books thanks to Be My Eyes. - Yeah, so you love Be My Eyes now. - I do. - Yes, absolutely. Basically, it's like initiating a video call with a volunteer. It's fantastic and it works so well. - Yeah, it's just a FaceTime call, but with a volunteer, right. So, you know, imagine that on something like Vision Pro, where you don't have to have your phone in hand. You can just basically wear the headset and be able to do all of that. And of course, there's so much more we could do. Color identification, light identification, reading documents, just holding the document up, you get a letter in the post, you can just hold it in front of you. If a parcel arrives, you can find out who exactly that parcel's for before you rip into it. The amount of times I have opened up my neighbor's parcels. - Yes, but it's okay. Play the blind card, it's fine. - Listen, it works. - "Oh, I didn't know, I'm so sorry." - I mean, most of the time, I'm giving this stuff back to the neighbor. Sometimes, it's, "I could use that." - Wait, you realize people may watch this, Steven Scott. - No one's watching, don't worry, it's fine. - Oh, that's fine. That's right, you confess away. - It's only on the internet, watched by millions. No one's caring. But anyway, that all aside, as much as that would be wonderful to have, that's not where we will be, I don't think, on day one. Yeah, we might be there on day five, or day 10, or day 20, I don't know, we just don't know yet. But one thing we can tell you is how the device could be used by people who are disabled. And that's really important, so I'm gonna start with us 'cause I'm extremely selfish. - Yes. - And, I wanna talk about VoiceOver. Now, VoiceOver is the screen reader that exists on an iPhone. It is a fantastic thing, it helps me, it helps you use our phones, right? We can pick up our phone, and what you guys can see, we can tap on the screen, and I'm able to hear back, I'm able to get audible feedback. And, you know, you get so many examples of this out there these days, which you can listen to and get a sense of, and it means anybody at any point in life can use a smartphone whether they're blind or not, or whether you're sighted or not, even. So VoiceOver is coming to Vision Pro, so we can tick that one off, that one is coming. We know it's coming. - Definitely. - And basically, be able to move by gestures 'cause of course, this is very much using hand gestures, this device, so you have your hands out in front of you, you would swipe right, swipe left with your hand. You can use voice commands as well, and everything that you would see on screen would be read aloud using VoiceOver, so that is pretty cool. Now, for people who are low vision, that is, of course, gonna be really useful. There will be magnification capabilities in this as well for people who perhaps need to zoom in on something or look at something up close. That feature will be there as well, but of course, not all disability is blindness, and there are lots of other disabilities. I mean, for example, people who, perhaps, can't necessarily speak to use voice commands. Some people use pointer control, which is a thing where you essentially can use a large wand. Some people have this as a physical device, and that will certainly be the case. You can have this physical device in your hand or attached to certain fingers that will allow you to point to what it is you are trying to point to in the device. So on the virtual screen in front of you, you can point to whatever icon it is you want to use or interact with, and you'd be able to control that, which is pretty cool. - Very cool, yeah. - And then, there's an eye track pointer as well, and hand gesture as well, so tapping your forefinger and your thumb together, for example, can be used to select. Now, of course, we've heard this already, this is a feature called double-tap. No relation to us. Although, we absolutely think it is. - Yes, we came up with it, yeah. - Well, exactly, we were here first. I mean, it's worth putting out there. So, um, yeah. - Let's hope the lawyers aren't watching. - I think the lawyers have woken up again. I think I'm getting some weird signals over here. But yeah, basically, what you have here is the ability to double-tap, you know, tapping your forefinger and your thumb together. That allows you to create an action, essentially, and this is something which, you know, is great for a lot of people, but if you don't have control of your hands, there's a feature called Dwell Control that allows you to dwell your eyes on a certain element long enough for it to be activated. And this is what's wonderful about the accessibility within Apple, right? So where something might not work for us, like, for example, looking at something long enough for it to be activated wouldn't work for us. - No. - That is something that very much could help someone who is in this position, who maybe can't use their hands to do it. This is what I love about all this, and of course, the other thing about accessibility Apple's shown is that a lotta these features can kind of work together, right? You've found this over the years. - Oh, absolutely, yeah. It's like voice control and VoiceOver on my smartphone. Absolutely play nicely together without a problem, and it could be a case, you know, where it's not just one disability for one person. You could have multiple disabilities, or a spectrum of a certain disability and a spectrum of another disability, and the fact that you can almost pick and mix, you can customize these accessibility features, you know, that the default way is eye gaze in the Vision Pro, where you look at an item and it knows that's what you want to, you know, it almost selects it for you, just going off what you're looking at from inside the Vision Pro. I mean, very cool, but obviously, that wouldn't work for me. I'm unable to pick something out like that, so you can turn that off, and instead turn VoiceOver on. And it's that thought that Apple always puts into these products which makes them so desirable to us, definitely. Now, again, accessibility is different from actually a use case. Is it usable by me? Is there something I... A reason why I would wanna use this product? So far, we don't know, but when it comes to accessibility, it's looking really good. - Yeah, and you know, for people who have hearing issues, you know, maybe you're deaf or you're hard of hearing, then, you know, let's say for example, you're watching media, or you're doing a FaceTime or Zoom call, subtitles can be customized as well. So you could have, you know, a large font if you like, maybe your vision's not great either and you maybe need to get that larger font, you can make it as large as required. This is something which I find in the Apple TV to be extremely useful when my vision was a little bit better. Now, I must admit, you can make that text so big that it pretty much takes up the entire screen. - Yes. - You know, if ever there was an opportunity for a second screen display, I would want it just for those subtitles. - Another 55-inch TV just for the subtitles. - Just for the subtitles, yeah. But it's a great feature, you know, it's a brilliant thing, and it can help people be able to, you know, understand something and just be able to follow along. I mean, that's what subtitles are all about, for deaf people to be able to follow that kind of media. And, you know, I mentioned FaceTime or Zoom calls because, or course, these days in Zoom, all of this is, you know, captions are available inside Zoom meetings live, and in FaceTime, you can have the same feature as well. So even, you know, someone who's totally deaf can do a FaceTime call if, for example, they are perhaps not able to do sign language. So, you know, that's a wonderful thing. And, you know, it's interesting, I was talking to someone once who talked about the challenge of not being able to do sign language, and I said, "Oh, is that common?" And they said, "No, no, I broke my hand." Like, of course. - Oh! - The guy broke his hand, so he couldn't sign for a while, so he needed to rely on captioning. - And that's the thing, temporary disability. - Even within our community. - Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, excellent point. - And of course, the other one to mention is the Reduce Animations feature, which is a brilliant thing. Reducing animations, reducing transition effects, it helps anyone with a cognitive impairment or anyone who suffers from motion sickness. And if you do, then you can turn these features off so that you don't get as much of that whoosh, and whash, and bang, and wallop, and kazam, and other sounds available. - Other, yes, well done. Abracadabras. We want less of that. - Yeah, exactly, less abracadabra, wallakazoo, or whatever that thing was from the film. But I also want to mention, you know, I mentioned gestures, okay, but there's another thing to consider here, and that is the input side. So gestures is one input, but can also use braille displays with this, us blind folks, we can use our braille displays. - Oh, that's cool, I did not know that. - Yeah, yeah, you connect a braille display to it, which, of course, is wonderful not just for us, but for deaf blind people, too. - Yeah. - And you'll be able to connect a regular keyboard to it, so a regular bluetooth keyboard, and that is something that will probably be encouraged in the mainstream conversation, I'd imagine, 'cause typing on that keyboard might be rather challenging on the virtual screen. But there's a lot of people saying, "Ah, I'm just gonna use a regular keyboard," and I think that's gonna be popular too, but that is also something that makes it more accessible to us, and many others as well. So lots of accessibility features, that's what we know so far. It's unlikely here at "Double Tap," we're gonna get out hands on a Vision Pro any time soon because I'm too tight to buy it, he's definitely too tight to buy it. - Absolutely, but you never know. Hello, Apple, I love you. You never know, we may get one for a review. - Yeah, but it's not out in the UK yet, that's the point, it's not available in the UK at where we are, so coming soon, a review. But, you know, we can say that because there's absolutely no chance I was ever getting my hands on it. So, you know. That's one promise we don't have to worry about. - But the point is that if we did, we would be able to use it. - Exactly. - I don't think we can sort of overstate that enough. It's so nice, so refreshing to have a company where you think, "You know what? It's gonna be accessible." - Yeah. So that's our thoughts on Apple Vision Pro accessibility. Are you gonna buy one? Are you blind, are you considering it? Hey, if you're not blind, are you thinking about buying it? 'Cause, look, there's not gonna be that many available when they do come out. I think you'll be more likely to get hen's teeth at that point, so we shall see. But I'll be interested to hear people's thoughts. Follow us, as usual, Double Tap on YouTube. Of course, if you're here already, you don't really need to do that, 'cause you've already found us, but, you know, you can find us in other places as well because we're on every day on the podcast. Double Tap at audio.com is where you'll find all the information about our show. You can subscribe to the podcast wherever you get those good, and bad, podcasts, just search for "Double Tap." We're in amongst the zombies. Which seems an appropriate place to leave us. And, um, yeah. And you can email us, too. I've nearly forgot, feedback @doubletaponair.com. Shaun, we'll be back soon, believe it or not. - Of course we will. Yes, well, unless other people say different, we will be back, thank you.