- Hey guys, welcome to another episode of "Double Tap" on YouTube. I am Steven Scott.

- And I am Shaun Preece, hello.

- Now, you know Shaun, I love a little bit of fast food. It has been known for me to-

- Just a little bit.

- A tiny, tiny, tiny little bit of chicken, yeah, usually chicken. But there are other places you can go, places that sell burgers, for example, very popular. The great Scottish restaurant that I love to go to every so often called McDonald's.

- Yes.

- Yes. I love that one. Very popular. But the interesting thing is, you go in, nowadays there's barely any staff, and there's these gigantic, almost like, you know, human-sized iPads that are sitting there and that is how you're meant to choose your meal, that is how you're meant to order, pay, and all of that. And that's getting a little bit tricky. They're called kiosks and, you know, they are quite tricky. I mean, obviously for us.

- Quite tricky.

- I mean it's, yeah. Let's just be blunt about it, useless, frankly.

- We can't use them.

- No, exactly.

- You're right. And this is not just a McDonald's problem, this is everywhere. Everywhere is moving to this way of ordering food, you know, digitally. And it makes a lot of sense, you know, people can quickly order what they want and it frees up staff, and it makes the whole process quicker and payment easier. I get that. But yeah, obviously when it comes to accessibility, there's issues there. I've even been into a place and went up to the counter and was told, "No, no, we don't take orders here anymore. You got to do it on the kiosk." And obviously, well, I can't do that, so someone's gotta come with me and do it for me.

- And that's before you even dig into the conversation around cashless. I mean, I saw a video on YouTube, I don't know how real this was. I mean, I assume it was real. These days you have to take things with a little bit of caution. But, you know, it was a video of a guy who was in his elder years and he was trying to buy something with cash at a store, and they just wouldn't accept the cash, they just wouldn't accept it. And, you know, that was another issue. That's another problem that we're having in our world today, is that even the cashless side of things is kind of disappearing. So the idea that we move from that to no staff and instead we're dealing with these kiosks doesn't seem that massive a leap. But of course for businesses, it's a great way to save money because they don't have to pay people. And these robots can work on, they don't take lunch, they don't break down. Well, they sometimes do break down, but you know, they're certainly available a lot more and you can put more of them in. We're seeing more and more of them be installed in stores now. And this is obviously a major area for us, it's a major area of concern, but it's also an area of opportunity. And on the show recently we had Matt Ater from Vispero tell us all about JAWS for kiosk and how first JAWS, the screen reader for Windows is being sort of rebuilt in a new way to accommodate these new kiosks and actually be built into them. And it's something that Matt Ater has been traveling around the world selling to different businesses, including McDonald's. But most recently he was in the UK and he stopped by to tell us about what he's doing in the UK and what his hopes are for the kiosks themselves.

- One of the divisions of Vispero called TPG Interactive or TPGI for short, is the division who distributes and consults around kiosks. And we just solidified a partnership with RNIB to be the exclusive distributor in the UK for JAWS for kiosks. And this will be both Windows and Android. And we're just thrilled to have them as a partner because I think they bring the connection to the community, the connection to industry, something we don't have physically on the ground here in the UK, especially when it comes to industry like travel, hospitality, retail, RNIB is positioned for it. People come to them all the time from those industries, financial included in there. And so I think, we love the fact that we've solidified this partnership and found them to be a perfect partner for opening the doors to the UK market. The JAWS for kiosk version, again, is available in Windows and Android. It's a slim down version of JAWS. It runs on a, I'm going to break it down into a little further than just a kiosk. 'Cause kiosk, a lot of people think of those massive screens in restaurants or airports and things like that. And those are some of those types of products. But it could always be something like a payment device. You guys in the UK, I know this is a Canadian show, but in Canada as well, have had payment devices at the table for years. So if I went to the table or sat down a table, ordered my meal, instead of taking the credit card and going in the back and making a payment like we do in the United States, the payment may be made at the table, and JAWS for kiosk, the Android version can run on a device like that so that I would know what tip I'm putting in if I wanna put a tip in, I can read my own bill. All of those kind of things that are necessary for somebody who's blind. I can know that I can tap my card, insert my card, tap my phone to it, if phone payments are accepted, those are things that when somebody hands you one of these devices today, you don't know any of this kind of stuff and you're just taking their word that the price is right and the tip if you wanna put a tip in is correct. And so other devices that you may find something like this on, seat back entertainment, in an airplane, trying to think of some others that we're looking at. It could be on a workout piece of equipment. You know, maybe that workout piece of equipment has a tablet on it. You're seeing refrigerators with tablets, you're seeing microwaves now using Android to run them. Other appliances being run by Android. So the term kiosk could be broadly say self-contained device or something with a screen. And if it's run in Android or Windows, we want to help make it accessible. And basically you could walk into a restaurant today, find a headphone jack, plug in headphones, and if it begins talking, great, it may be us, it may be something that was built before us, and hopefully you can use it. And on that next to the headphone jack should be buttons so that you can navigate through the screen options. And so like a right arrow key would move forward through items on the screen, just like you would on a website, and left would move back through the items. And then in our configuration, up and down would move you through sections of the screen to make you, after you've added a hamburger and fries and a drink to your order, you wanna get to checkout, in our case, you'd press down arrow key to get to checkout. So you're skipping past all the other sandwiches so you can quickly get through the process. So we offer both the concept of using the keypad if it exists, or touch, and our touch experience both in Windows and Android would mimic the keypad. So swipe right would be very similar to using an iPhone today. Swipe left would go back, and then up and down are gonna move by sections of the screen again and double tap would select something. So, you know, the intent is to have a very simple user interface, offer you the chance to, with specific commands, increase the speed or change the volume, things like that. And then it just comes down to, in some instances, offering privacy. You know, if you're in a healthcare check-in, you don't wanna provide your personal data to everybody in the room. So that's why headphones are necessary. But also blanking the screen so that nobody can see what you're doing. And we're all used to that with iPhones, right? Where we can turn our screen off and have privacy mode, the screen curtain, and the same thing can exist on a kiosk for privacy.

- So quite detailed description there of what kiosks are. And actually, perhaps more importantly, what they could be. And I think this is what I loved about what Matt talked about there, the fact that let's not just stop at the idea of those fast food stores and their kiosks. Let's think about going to a hotel. Let's think about all of the devices that are around us all the time that are generally inaccessible to us. Let's make the world more accessible in a bigger way. This is a good piece of work that Vispero are doing here.

- Oh, this could have a massive impact. And to be honest, I think they're doing themselves a bit of a disservice by just using the kiosk label there. Because basically this is JAWS everywhere else but a computer, I mean, we talked about the tablets we see in or the kiosks, let's call them that, and we see in restaurants. But I mean just the machine they bring to your table once you've finished eating a meal to pay now, I mean that's never been accessible to me. It's always a case of giving my card to someone or you know, getting someone else to do it. The hotel tablets, we're seeing more and more of those and I think it's a great idea because you know, one interface to make accessible, but most of the experience I've had so far is they are inaccessible. So again, I think this is a fantastic, this could have like a huge impact for everything we do in daily life.

- Yeah, I'm really intrigued to hear how people feel about this, especially as that conversation has broadened out. So I encourage you guys to get involved, get in touch with us, tell us your thoughts on all of this, as the conversation continues here. You can go back of course and listen to the "Double Tap" podcast with Matt Ater from Vispero. Go check that out on the "Double Tap" podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, good and bad. And you can find that there. You can also keep in touch with us, feedback@doubletaponair.com. Call us. You remember that, calling on the old phone? I used to do that. I used to call up and say , or whatever it was.

- That's exactly how he speaks.

- It's exactly. You know, remember they used to do that on the old TV shows? They'd have someone on the phone.

- Yes.

- That's exactly it. 1-877, don't make that noise on the thing though, I think it'll blow up. 1-877-803-4567. We are out here, we'll catch you next time. Thanks, Shaun.

- Thank you. Bye-Bye.