- Hello, everybody. It's Double Tap on YouTube once again. Shaun, we're getting into a stride. This is our third video. - I know, this is easy. We should have done it sooner. - Like, subscribe, ring the bells. - Bells. Something about bells. What's the bell all about? I don't understand, anyway. Today I want to put out a plea. I wanna put out a plea. - Oh, we're after money again? Perfect. - Well, yeah, that'll come later. We'll get to that point eventually. We'll do that thing they do where it's like, well, if you subscribe to Double Tab Plus, - Oh, yes. - you can have eight million extra episodes a day. That's not happening over here, by the way. I'm not doing eight million extra episodes. I'm doing enough. - No, exactly right. Double Tap Only Fans, it'll happen. - Sitting here talking for 10 minutes. Are you kidding me? Keep this up I'm going back to shelf stacking. - Okay. - Well, I would if they'd let me, but unfortunately - - No, they won't let you. - I keep getting denied the opportunity. - So what are you pleaing for? - So, I love new tech. So do you, right? We love new technology. We love exciting technology. - Of course. - And there's a piece of tech that came across my radar just a couple of weeks back actually, and it's almost like a typewriter equivalent, a modern day typewriter. Now, I've heard about these devices before. What essentially they do is, they're called distraction free devices, right? So you can type on them, usually for people who write books or blogs or whatever, and they just wanna write, but they want no distractions, no notifications. They don't wanna use an iPad. They don't wanna use a laptop because, you know, they'll end up drifting off onto an email, or they'll drift off onto Twitter, or whatever it might be. They're gonna drift off and do something else. They're always getting distracted by notifications, stuff that's going on. You just want to type. You just wanna focus on that. - Right. I totally understand that, yes. Happens to me all the time. - Well, yeah, exactly. - And sometimes you just wanna focus on that one task. And it's funny because, of course, we've built these devices now, we've kind of got to a place where everything's in one device, and now we're kind of starting to unpick all that. You know, we're starting to see, nah, you know, - Yes. - I just want a typewriter. I just want old typewriter back. So I want you to think about this like a typewriter, but the difference being the paper is E Ink. So kinda like one of those Kindle tablets that you would get, the Kindle, what do you call them, E-readers. - Yeah. A Kindle. Also known as a Kindle, yeah, that's right. - Yes, hey, well done. - Randomly searching for a word I've already said. But yeah, so you get these devices, and there's not that many on the market at the moment. There's a few, and there's certainly more tablets, like Remarkable is one I've heard about where it's like a tablet device and you can write on it, and then that can be digitally turned into text that can then be copied onto your computer. So that's like a notepad type thing. But this is more about typing. So you have a QWERTY keyboard, you have a very small, and there's different types of these devices. The company Freewrite is the one I'm talking about here, which is Freewrite, W-R-I-T-E. And what they've done is, they've developed a number of these over the years where some of them have screens where you can see a little bit of a picture, but they're all kind of six inch gray scale screens. And it's all kind of built on top of the device. So it's quite a flat device, it's got the keyboard, and then above it this tiny little screen. But this new one they've brought out is called Alpha. And the Alpha one has, I would say, maybe a four or five line LCD display, or E ink, I should say, display, which is very small, gray scale. I don't know how anybody could read this to be perfectly honest, but clearly people with better vision than us can manage it. And that sounds fine. But I was looking at this device thinking how cool would it be if this had audio output, almost like a screen reader built into it where it was able to read back what I had written. I could arrow up and down or listen back to the text I'd typed. You know, get keyboard echo as you would on a screen reader. And I thought, how cool would that be? Now, I did check into this particular device, there's no headphone jack on it, there's no Bluetooth on it. So there's no way for you to connect a device to get audio out. And there doesn't seem to be any accessibility mentioned. Now, that, to be perfectly honest, guys, doesn't surprise me at all. This is nothing new. These kind of devices come out, they're great ideas and they work for the mainstream, but there's never any accessibility consideration. There's probably an argument to say, well, if the blind person can't read the screen, why would you want to use this anyway? Missing out entirely the fact if you put audio into it, we would be able to use it. And it would be a brilliant little note taker. Now, for blind people, there are a number of note taker options, but they're often braille led, right? So you get these braille led devices like the Brailliant series or the Focus series from Vispero. These are all different types of braille input keyboards. So if you've seen them, they have a Braille keyboard, which is the QWERTY, not quirky. - Not quirky. - No, not perky. - It's six buttons. - Perkins. - Yes. I was getting my QWERTY and my Perkins mixed up, and ending up with Perky. Which I think is actually not a bad idea for the end of that. - I like it. - Yeah, I think we should rename everything. But yeah, so they've got that Perkins style keyboard on there. You've got your braille display where you can feel the dots as they raise up and down. It's like kind of a mechanical display that shows up, almost like an old dot matrix display. And that is our kind of note taker option. But those note taker options are really expensive, Shaun. We're talking thousands upon thousands of dollars. - Absolutely, yes. Almost inaccessible because of their price tag. - Yeah. - There are cheaper ones just coming through. Over the last few years we've started to see more affordable ones, but you're still talking hundreds and hundreds of dollars, even for the cheapest braille display. - So, enter the Alpha from Freewrite. And you might be thinking, okay, so why is he getting excited about this? It's got no accessibility on it, you can't see it, so why is he getting excited? Well, I'm not gonna getting excited for the Alpha, because I'm not gonna buy the Alpha. I would love to buy the Alpha, Shaun. - Okay. I'm gonna get into that in a minute. I'm really interested why you're so excited, but carry on. - Why I'm so excited by that? Well, look, I want the idea, I want the option for distraction free writing as well. We have a blog here. We have doubletaponair.com. I wanna put more content up there. Sometimes I just wanna type, I just wanna type in peace and quiet and not have endless distractions, notifications coming in over the top, which are continually interrupting my screen reader as I go along. I just wanna type. And I like the idea of just being able to take this device away. It's small, it's very portable. It's almost a laptop without a screen. I know it does have a small screen at the top of it, but if you took the screen off - - It's a keyboard - - it's about the same size. - with a screen. - Yes, exactly. It's the keyboard without a touch pad really. It's like the keyboard's been moved forward, - Yeah. - and where the touch pad would be, is basically a tiny little screen. And it's really simple, but there are smarts in this, and it's important to understand this. There are some smarts in here as well. So it's not exclusively some kind of basic device that all it's doing is just writing to an SD card. It's connected to the cloud as well. It's updating Google Docs as it goes along. It's got automatic saving. So it's got an operating system in there. It just doesn't maybe have the ability yet to have any kind of accessibility, or if it does have the ability, it's not being realized. So that's why I'm excited about it. That's why I like the idea. And that's my plea. That is my plea to this company, to consider everybody with this product, because I think you're missing something here. I think you're missing out on something. Because this kind of device would open up this kind of note taker to us blind people as well. - All right. Okay. A couple of takes on this. Firstly, do you think this is going to be a popular emerging technology? Do you think this is a new sector? But I'm not convinced by this distraction free. How many people don't know how to turn on do not disturb for one thing? Or do you think there's enough of a demand for a device like this, before we even get to, well, how about making it accessible so blind people can use it? How about for the mainstream in general, do you think this - - What's that got to do with anything? - is gonna take off? - It's about choice, right? - Well, no, no, it's not about choice. In the ideal world it's about choice, but it's also about business. If only three people buy these things, then you're not going to see another one ever. And if the entire sector of distraction free devices doesn't take off, then forget about it. It's gone. - But that's the same with anything, right? Blackberry was - - Yes. - a fantastically popular smartphone until something else came along and destroyed it. So should I have, in hindsight, never bought a Blackberry? Because there was always that chance that company was gonna die off, so perhaps I shouldn't bother. - Was the Blackberry accessible from the initial get go? - But that's not the question you're asking. The question you're asking is, - No. - well, hang on, how popular's this particular category of devices, irrespective - - Yes. - of it's accessibility or not. And the answer is, - Yes. - it doesn't matter. - Oh, it does matter. - It only matters on the other side, right? If you wanna look twenty years down the line, I can't tell you the answer to that. But what I can tell you is, that right now they are selling, they must be selling because they continually develop them. Their continually making them. So someone's buying them. - How long's this been available? - I don't know how long this category's been around, I must admit, this is a fairly new category to me. I've always looked for something like this. This is where this is coming from. I've always looked for something that I could just take away. I had one of these, I remember something like this years ago. I cannot remember the make it was. I had it at school, so we're talking mid 90's. - 1890's, yes. - Sorry, hang on, is that right? Yeah, mid 90's. Just to remind myself, yeah. And it was the 1990's, - How old am I? - thank you Shaun. - Okay. Thank you. - And very similar to this, it had the QWERTY keyboard, it had the tiny little E ink display. I think it was more just an LCD display with four lines of text on it. - Yeah. - And what happened was the whole thing did write to memory, but then what would happen is, and this was the most hilarious thing in the world, you would connect it to a Mac, and what you had to do was, you had to open ClarisWorks on the Mac, - Oh, classic. - yeah. Open up ClarisWorks, get a new text document open, then you would plugin via serial cable this device, and it was literally like you were tipping the letters one by one in to the Mac. Because it would take one letter at a time and it would just populate the text document on the Mac. on the mac. - Oh, right. - Now, the funny thing about that was, in those days if you for whatever reason, and it happened all the time, if the serial cable became disconnected you lost everything. Everything just fell out the machine and it gone. - Right. So it just purged everything, dumped and forgotten about. - Yeah. - Yeah, that's gone mate. Forget about it. - So that was it. And the amount of notes I lost, and things I lost over time. But it was a great idea, and I always looked for something similar. I always wanted something similar to that, and it was just a case of trying to find something that would be accessible. Now, the reality is, I haven't found anything as accessible. The closet we have, going back to what I said earlier about these kind of braille type devices, is what's called the Mantis Q40. - That is the QWERTY keyboard - Yes. - but it has a braille display in it, which is great, doesn't have audio, but then that's not a major problem because you're connecting it to a device that does, a laptop or a phone, or whatever. But we're talking over 4,000 dollars for that. So, hello. - Again, with the Mantis there, we're talking about connecting it to something that is accessible, bringing the distraction factor back into things. What I think you're actually looking for is a Windows or Mac computer which is just built into a keyboard. I think that is the dream. - That would be nice, yeah. - Yes, you can buy little dongles now, almost USB pen drives. Or like the Amazon Fire TV stick sort of size that simply, they're a computer on a stick. And you can plug those into a TV, connect a Bluetooth keyboard to it and you've a got a computer going there. And obviously that's not go for on the go. What we're talking about here is almost a note taker style thing, something you can take with you on the train, type away, and save a document without having to have a entire computer with you. I get that, but still, I think I want those extra functionalities that comes with a fully formed OS. - I think you're missing my point. I think you've missed my point - - Go on. Okay. - Which is that I want this to be a choice for me. If I had full vision I could buy this tomorrow. That's the point. Again, I understand you're argument about, oh well, it's great, I can have a laptop, and I can have everything I want. Yeah, that's fine. But I don't want that. I've got a laptop and I'm happy with it, but when I wanna sit down and do some serious work and serious typing, and serious writing, especially when you wanna check things, you wanna spend time going over documents, checking over it. - Yeah. - It takes time, and you get so many notifications and distractions, it's all very well saying turn on do not disturb or whatever, - Yeah, easy. - I've still got my phone that can keep my up to date with all those other things. - Turn it off. - It's not that I'm cutting myself off. No, but the point is, it's the device itself I want to not be distracted on. So I don't wanna cut everything off, I still wanna be connected to the world. I don't wanna go an live in Montana in a cabin, you know, - Hello Montana. - disconnected - from the planet. - We love you. - We love you. - Yeah, for all our Montana viewers, just got a slight on you. - I do understand what you're saying, and I do get it, but it's almost that impossible thing that if I get this or if I do this then my productivity is going to be suddenly a lot better than it is now. I'm gonna be far more organized and on top of things. - But I'm not getting the choice to find out. That's my point. So I can go and spend $4,000 on the Mantis Q40, or can spend $400 on this. Now, I'm not saying $400 is a, - $400? - but $400 versus $4000, are you serious? - Ah, no. - And by the way, the Mantis doesn't talk either. - No, it doesn't, exactly right. - So I'm still no further forward really. - And if you don't read braille, by the way, not all blind people use braille. - It's only a small number of people who are blind read braille, exactly. - So that's in the same boat. I don't know, I suppose that I can't get out of my bubble, is that I'm honestly not sure how useful this is when I've got a phone in my pocket, when I've got a laptop I can take with me if wanna get some work done. I get the distraction aspect of it. If this was something like 50 bucks, then maybe, okay, I get it. It's a portable typewriter basically, at that point. - The more popular it gets, the more chance that has. And this is, again, the point. The more popular these devices become, the more chances are that they will become either replicated by other companies, or other versions of this will come out and they will be cheaper. - That's true. - But the key point, and the point I'm making here is, and my plea today is please consider accessibility from day one. Because you will increase you're potential market share by a lot. And if you don't know, - That's true. - or you're not sure if blind people will by your product, well, here's the thing. For sure they won't if they can't. That's a given. - That is an excellent point and I can't find any argument against it. No, you're absolutely right. The thing is, we need to get into the tech specs here. What OS is it running, is it a bespoke something on a chip? Or is it - - We're gonna talk more about it soon. - some fork of android? - I'm in contact with the company, we're gonna get them on, we're gonna talk about this. I wanna put this to them as well. I'm not just singling these guys out, but this particular product I am because is it exactly what I'm looking for. - Because you want it. I want it, yeah. I would buy this tomorrow if this was accessible to me, I would. I'd spend my hard earned money, in quotes. The money part, not the hard earned. Although, arguably. But no, seriously, I would buy this product tomorrow, I think it's a great idea. I love the concept of it. I think a lot of blind people would be interested in it. I don't know how many, but again, if we can't buy it then you'll never know. - Yes. - Let's just try and encourage more businesses, more companies, more developers to just realize there's community of us out there. We're all not sitting reading braille, listening to the radio, waiting for someone else to feed us. That's not how this works when you're blind, there are many of us in employment, there are lot's of us out there, lot's of us doing things. And we wanna do more, we have fun, enjoyable lives, do fun things, and technology can enable that. But it can only enable it if it's accessible. And this isn't. So, what are you doing about it? - It's a very fine and valid plea Steven Scott, I will agree with you there. - We're back soon with more Double Tap on YouTube, thank you Shaun, goodbye. - Thank you, bye, bye. - And don't forget you can follow us, and you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for Double Tap, you can find us on doubletaponair.com, there's lot's of articles and news there you can go and read. And you can also get in touch, either through the comments here or email us, feedback@doubletaponair.com. We'll catch you next time.