Home-Based Tech Tools: What Really Helps When You Have Vision Loss

0:01-:You might have heard about smart homes or smart devices for your home, but what exactly does that mean? And for someone with vision loss, what are the pros and cons for having these devices in your house that can be connected and controlled with a smartphone or a voice assistant? In this episode, Steven Scott of the Double Tap Podcast joins us as we share personal experiences and opinions on using smart devices. I'm Ricky Enger, and this is Hadley Presents.

0:31Welcome to the show, Steven.

0:33-:Hey, Ricky, lovely to be back. It is wonderful to have you back and we always have a fantastic time. I suspect today will be no different. We're gonna have a lot of fun talking about smart homes today. I am really looking forward to it. Before we dive into that, for the three or four people who may not know who you are, why don't you just go through a quick intro, tell us a bit about who you are and what you do? Well, that's very kind. I'm sure it's more than that, but yes.

1:00I'm Stephen Scott. I host a daily technology show from the blindness perspective called Double Tap. And since the last time we spoke to you, we really are daily. We're on seven days a week. We do every an hour, every day. We don't expect you to keep up with that, but you, you are welcome to pick and choose whatever you like and come along for the tech. But you know, what you can expect is a lot of interesting conversation between two blind guys talking about how we navigate life as blind people as well as the technology we use.

1:28-:We will have a link to that in the show notes for people to check out if you've not been a part of Double Tap before and it's well worth it. So I'm curious, I know that you, and maybe I'll regret this, it might take the whole episode just to talk about this part, but I'm curious what devices you have or really what category of device you have in your home that you would sort of consider a smart device. So this would be something that you can operate either with your smartphone and or a voice assistant like Google or Siri or Amazon's device, Alexa.

2:10We tend to call that one the A lady or lady a 'cause she's always listening for her name and then she thinks we're talking about her and talking to her. But anyway, yeah. What devices do you have in this category?

2:23-:Well, it's interesting. A lot of people think because I'm into my tech, that my home is absolutely buzzing with technology in, in every corner. And it, it actually isn't. I tend to keep my smart home quite simple and there's a good reason for that. I don't live here alone, Ricky. I have a wife who, you know, isn't as techie and wants to be able to use the technology as well. And so I have to think about, and it's important actually when I'm doing it, and it helps me when I'm doing the show because I think okay is, you know, I might get excited about the latest, greatest thing, but is she gonna find this interesting?

2:58Is she going to enjoy this? Is she gonna want to use it? Is she gonna be able to understand to use it? It needs to be simple, it needs to be uncomplicated. Not because, you know, she's incapable of learning all this or doing it, it's just that she doesn't, she's not as techy as I am. You know, she's not into it in the same way. Yeah. And so she just wants to, you know, press a button and the light comes on and press the button, the light goes off and what she doesn't want to happen is that when she presses the button, the light doesn't turn on and doesn't turn off.

3:25So it, it's about compatibility with everyone in the home. It's also about something that's consistently good and functions well. And of course then we can talk about accessibility of tools. And I have to say, the more you talk, the more you get into that discussion, the amount of options does narrow because you, you trying to find accessible tools out of the box that are available that are not going to cost the Earth are difficult. It's difficult to do that, you know?

3:53So, so I I, I have the standard, if you like, smart speaker as I would refer to her as Lady A and so, you know, we, we all started, you know, playing with this in the house and that was immediately an interesting device to bring into the home, which I think was one of the first smart tools where my wife really engaged because I was explaining to her like, you just talk to it, just ask it a question, ask it to play your favorite song. And it did and she was blown away.

4:18-:And I think that's the key, right? Is that it's, it feels natural. I think it is. And I think it's also when you show someone a tool like this, because look, I, I get very excited about lots of different tech and you know, I can hear my wife's eyes rolling because she's like, yeah, whatever. And you know, even friends of mine will say, yeah, but is that really a big deal? Does that matter? And so, you know, I think if people get excited by it and then they see what it can do or they hear what it can do or they can, you know, learn what it can do, then I think suddenly you feel, okay, I might be engaged by this.

4:50And a good example of this was years ago, I remember spending some time with some folks, and of course I I I, I never subscribed to the theory that age has anything to do with capability, right? I've heard this so many times in my life. Oh, well you know, what about, what about someone who's 85, you know, who maybe doesn't understand how to use this technology? I think I've met a lot of 85 year olds who could probably outdo me and technology, right? Exactly.

5:13-:Yes. It's not about age. All right, it's about understanding, it's about willingness. Some people just don't care, some people don't want to. Yeah, it's a mindset. Absolutely. And so what you have to do if you really wanna engage someone and show them what it can do for them, and I remember spending time teaching someone how to use an iPad and what I did was I focused in on that person's need, what they wanted to do. And in those days, that person wanted to contact their son who lived in Australia and wanted to contact them via Skype.

5:41So we spent time showing that person how to use Skype on an iPad and they were blown away. And I said, now everything you've just learned today, you can apply that to any app on this device. Same things you've done the same swipes, the same taps, all of that. You can use the same approach to everything. And one by one slowly but surely, that person was suddenly getting interested in all these new apps, these new things. And prior to that couldn't care less. And that's the key.

6:08It's getting someone hooked in on what it can do for them. And it's the same with the smart home because the problem is, as you'll know, you go to that Best Buy, you go to any store and there's a mountain of technology options out there and it's not clear. It really isn't clear what works with what people will tell you, well, does it work with Lady A? Does it, has it got matter support? And you think, what does that mean? What, what does any of that mean?

6:32And so what I tend to do is, and this is why I chose the Echo and why I stick in particular with the Echo, is because a lot of the tools, a lot of the smart home devices you buy are natively compatible with it. So I don't have to think too far.

6:46-:Yeah, right. And that makes a big difference in my buying decisions. So you are an A lady person and I am primarily a Google Home person. And for similar reasons Google Home, it was sort of happening in parallel with Lady A here in the US and for whatever reason we chose Google Home and for the most part have stuck with it. Although we do have Lady A devices and in some cases that works better. So I imagine that you've got some smart lights, we have a couple, but it's sort of the same issue you talked about where we have guests over and they wanna turn on the guest room light and they're reaching over to the lamp and it's like, no way you have to say the word instead of, so smart lights are probably the, the least prevalent in our home, but we do have a doorbell camera and I think you do as well. Is that right?

7:48-:Yeah. And again, I went, I went with Ring and again, it was available first. One of the few that were, there were a lot of names flying around, but that one in particular seemed to be at the time, the one everyone was talking about. Now, the challenge of course was accessibility and it will always be a challenge with some of these doorbells. Some are better than others. Blink for example, is another sub-brand of Amazon, which is a good brand. It's a little bit more affordable as well, which a lot of people like.

8:16And you know, it, it seems to be a pretty accessible app. Strangely it's a little bit more accessible than Ring is, which is interesting. 'cause Ring's a more expensive version. Yeah,

8:24-:Yeah. So I, I just wanna pause and say that when we're talking about accessibility of these devices, what we're primarily talking about is not so much what you can ask the assistant to do and have it respond with, but more so what do you do in the app to set certain things up? Or if you are interfacing with that device, using your phone and not a smart assistant, how accessible is that? So that tends to be where things fall apart, at least in, in my experience.

8:57Is that true for you as well?

8:59-:Yeah, I, I would say so. And that's the problem oftentimes. Now I will say once you get past those issues, there are some real benefits to having the smart speaker almost be the hub in your home and connecting things through that. And of course you have to go through a process. There's a process of connection that you have to do with all of these devices, irrespective of which one you buy. It may be that you buy a smart plug or a smart bulb or a doorbell, whether it be Ring or Blink or anyone else.

9:27You can connect it through what's called a skill. So the Amazon Echo has a skill store a little bit like if you've heard of the Apple App store or the Google App store, essentially a library, a catalog of things you can buy or you know, in this case with the Amazon Skill store, you can actually just get for free. They don't cost any money at all. I think they have brought in some that cost, but not, not many. And in particular, anything that connects to another device or allows your device, your Amazon Echo in this case to connect to that.

9:56So let's give you an example. So my Ring doorbell has a skill that I can install on my Amazon Echo. I do that either by voice, I can say enable Ring doorbell skill to my device and it will, you know, tell me the process and do that. It's very simple actually. You just ask it and it does it. Or you can go through your app on your iPhone or your Android phone into the Lady a app. I always call it that name. Incidentally, I say Lady A because she's sitting right next to me and if I say her name, Yeah, it'll just go off.

10:28So I call a lady and you know, I can go into the app store and, and I can obviously find it there and I can en enable it from there. And then what happens is it will link to my ring in my case account, which will then allow for the doorbell to actually use the Amazon Echo as a chime, as a, as a bell. So when someone presses the ring doorbell, suddenly on my Echo it will say, Bing bong the summit at your front door. But it can go further than that.

10:56I have to say that the number one reason I use this in this way, yeah, of course having to chime is really useful because it saves you having to have your phone on, on you know, loud all the time. The biggest reason for having one of these devices is so that you can tell who's at the door and have a conversation with them before you open that door. It's a great safety tool for many people who are at home alone. Perhaps someone who is, is a little bit nervous, especially at night if someone knocks on your door and you know, we'll talk about some of the cool things we're doing with doorbells to make it even easier to identify.

11:26But the number one thing for me is that I can speak to my Amazon Echo and I can say Lady A talk to the front door and what will happen is that Amazon Echo, it will initiate a connection with the doorbell and I can talk to the person at the door and say, hi there, who's that? And that person could say, oh, it's your postman, I've got a parcel for you. And I can say, great, can you just leave it there and I'll come and get it in seconds, no problem at all.

11:54And then I say, lady A hang up, and in that interaction I'm able to have a conversation with someone at the front door and I can know who that person was, they've left the parcel, and I can go get it. That I think is, is possibly one of the best features of that particular combination.

12:11-:I think that's a really good example of why you might want something smart. And that's the question that comes up a lot, why should I care? So going back to finding that motivation for someone that isn't just, hey, this technology is cool. So I think there might be a couple other device categories and reasons that you might have smart devices in this category. So for whatever reason, mine tend to be devices that shouldn't have touch screens, but do so if I want to turn on my oven or use my dishwasher, you know, it's all a touch sensitive thing and in some cases it's difficult to label because if you are looking for where to press that label, well, you've just touched three other things in the process of doing that.

13:08So that's one reason that you might have, for example, a smart oven or a smart dishwasher. Do you have anything like this? So these sort of kitchen appliances that are smart?

13:21-:You know, I don't, and I'll tell you why. Because when we moved into this house and it was over 10 years ago, a lot of the appliances, if you like, were already installed and we were quite happy with them. And also, you know, if you don't need to replace them, why? And and honestly they were the kind of devices that you could put a bump on, on a button and you could quite easily set it up and, and you know, with a washing machine for example, it's the same setting I'm using every time I have a bump on that is set.

13:47So I can just turn the dial, I can press the start button and walk away. The dishwasher is exactly the same. I know every time I turn, I press the button on the far left, I press the middle button twice and then I press the far right button and I shut the the door and off it goes and starts its thing. I'll be honest, and this is kind of why you talk about the smart devices being really important, I do that because that's all I know what to do to get it started.

14:09There may be a million other functions of this thing, I have no idea what they are, but it works, it works for me. I would like to engage more with the washing machine and the dishwasher, but doing that excessively as a challenge, unless I obviously go out and buy a brand new machine and I will at some point have to do that. And when I do, I will absolutely be looking at smart because like you say, through the app on my smartphone, be able to control that device, get more out of it.

14:35Actually there's a Samsung washing machine in the states available now, it's not one of the cheapest devices I'll admit, but there is one out there now, which does have its own built in accessibility tool that you can actually listen to as you move around that touch screen you talk about it will actually speak aloud. So the technology is coming, it's kind of getting there. It's so far behind everything else, we are still reliant on the smartphone.

14:58And that's why often I'd say to people, if you are buying a new device, if you're buying a new appliance, the geeks let me will tell you go buy the latest smart thing. Actually sometimes the simpler option is A, the cheaper option, and B, the more accessible one, the microwave that doesn't have a million buttons on it, but actually just has two dials power and time, that may be all you need. And so if that is the case, just do that, get a bump on, you know, put it on the, the the 10 and the 20 and the 30 or whatever you want in terms of timing and just lay it out to suit you.

15:29And you know, talking air fryers are starting to become a thing, but you know, there's so few and far between. We we're reliant on smartphone accessibility and we're also reliant on that smartphone accessibility being there and not being broken at any point. And that is a real problem. We can, it might work today, but one update who'd come along into that app and and break that accessibility and suddenly you're left with a device which you can no longer use independently.

15:53So that's always something to consider. The smarter it gets, the more potential risks there are. I'm not trying to put people off smart technology, but I just think people need to understand that, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's better.

16:06-:Right, exactly. And I think that's one of the biggest things to think about if you're purchasing something new, is to have a plan in place. What happens if I wake up tomorrow and the accessibility of the app has changed or the connection with my smart assistant that I speak to has changed? Could I operate this device even if in a basic way? So again, pressing that ten second or 32nd button on the microwave, can I still use this or has it for all intents and purposes become a brick to me become.

16:43So yeah, that's certainly a thing to think about. And this has happened unfortunately, where I think there are some people with a particular air fryer, I believe it's Kari, and got really accustomed to being able to set the time, the temperature and start the device without ever having to touch it. And suddenly, I don't know if it was the A lady or KRI updating, but now you have to find and press a start button in order to get that going.

17:18-:You see, this is why I quite like the lead ea being the hub because ultimately what I think about when, when it comes to accessibility is, you know, you want something that is fairly untouchable. So, and nothing is untouchable, nothing is unbreakable. But if the purpose by the manufacturer is that you can use the Amazon Echo to talk to that device, if they have built that tool, then that tool should always, at least that base level should work. Right. So I, if we can talk a little bit about smart lights for a second, I want to go to that because in my home I have smart lights and the way we did it was I used Philip Hue.

17:57Now Philips Hue is a well-known brand, it's not a cheap brand, although they have come out with, they call it the essentials range, which are a little bit more affordable bulbs, which is good because you know, for a lot of blind people it's lighting is important, really important, especially for low vision. You know, people who are, are losing vision over time. Lighting is important and my wife is low vision and she needs a lot of light. She really needs a lot of light. I'm the opposite.

18:20I could happily live in the darkness, but she likes light. And for that reason, I was thinking about a smart solution for her where when she comes into the house of a dark evening, the lights just would come on. You know, I just wanted the lights to come on and there's lots of solutions for this. And these days, you know, you, you can't turn around without falling over some motion activated light somewhere. But often these lights that you can buy are, you know, they stick onto the wall.

18:47You've probably heard about adverts, you know, on Facebook or you know, maybe you've seen them on television. These lights, you can stick up in cupboards. I mean, you open the cupboard door, the light will come on, it's all great, but the problem is they're all battery operated, so you'd be forever charging things up. And they've made it a little bit easier. But still I wanted lights that were fixed in, in the ceiling in my case, little spotlight bulbs.

19:08And I wanted those to be able to be, you know, just to come on as we walk into the house and also when we go upstairs. And so that's what we did. I used a Phillips Hue motion sensor, I just stuck onto the wall and I've had that now on the wall for I think four or five years. And I've never changed the battery in that once, which is interesting how long that lasts. But that little motion sensor, which is just a little device that you get, you get the lights, you plug them into the, the roof as normal, they're just, even if they're smart lights, they're exactly the same as any other light.

19:37They don't use up anymore energy. In fact, because they're LED they use less so they're, they're cheaper than the halogen spotlight bulbs of old i I should say as well. You have a little device that you connect to the internet and you connect this box to it called a Phillips Hue Bridge. And it literally does that. It is a bridge to connect to your lights, to your internet, and that box is kind of the brain, the operation of, of the brain, of the whole, the whole thing.

20:02And you download the Philip Hue app onto your smartphone and you go through the process of adding the lights. That's a, a bit of a boring procedure because you gotta spend time trying to find the light and then connect. And sometimes it's fairly quick. It'll say, oh, we've found six lights. I tended to do it one by one, so I would know. And you can test the light by, you know, turning it on and off on the app and you would see if, if you can see at all, you'd be able to see the light going on and off.

20:28And that is how you can identify it. You can name it. So I could call it, you know, downstairs one, downstairs, two downstairs, three and so on. And that covers all my downstairs lights and the motion sensor again, it would say, I found a motion sensor, where is the position of this? And you can tell it, well, it's in my downstairs hall and I can now create a group and I can add my motion sensor and my downstairs one and my downstairs two and my downstairs three bulb.

20:51And then I can say, right, regarding this motion sensor, I wanna set this up so that when motion is detected, the following happens, the lights come on at full brightness for 10 minutes. And that is how I set mine up. And of course I say that I realize it, this is a time sensitive thing. You, you do have to go through it, it does take time, but it is accessible to do with a screen reader on a smartphone. And of course if you're low vision, you can use a tool like Zoom on your smartphone with your, an iPhone or Android and navigate around the app and set it all up and essentially build your smart home within the Philips Hue app.

21:27Now then, like I mentioned earlier about the Ring doorbell, I can go to my Amazon Echo app and I can ask it to enable the Philips hue skill. So you see we've learned how to do the ring, now we can do the same with the lights and suddenly we're starting to build our smart home here. And again, make the lady a the hub of the whole thing. And so now because I have built my groups and I've called it downstairs and I've set one up for my living room and I've set one up for my office and I've set one up for here and the kitchen and wherever else I can ask it to turn on the kitchen lights and all the kitchen lights will come on.

22:00Or I can say, turn on all the lights and every light in the house will come on or turn off the bathroom lights or whatever you want. You can set it up to suit you. You can even change the, the brightness of them if it's too bright, you can change that. You can change the scene, all of this and you can do it with your voice. So the hub of the home being the lady a in my case makes it smart, but makes it usable. You know, accessibility is one thing, but usability is another.

22:26And that's the key for me, building both.

22:28-:Absolutely, yeah, you've gotta have something where you can speak to it in a natural way instead of having to memorize a set of commands that don't necessarily make sense. It's never going to come naturally in that case and you're just gonna be wishing for that light switch. Yes. And that's the other thing as well. Now you mentioned that at the top about, you know, you you, you have guests coming over and they turn the lights off and the immediate thinking is, that's gonna destroy my smart lights because you've SunEd them all off, that means they've lost power.

22:57Does that mean they've forgotten everything that I've just told them? No, it doesn't. The good news is you can turn those lights back on again. They will default to an on state because that's what they would do. You can change all this in the app as well, but you know, the default is that it would change it to be, you know, turn the, the light on it will respond and turn all the lights on. And again, you could just see at that point, turn the lights off and it would do so.

23:20So, you know, it doesn't forget anything. I, as I say, I've found it to be incredibly reliable. I set and forget to some degree, I haven't changed any settings on my whole lights for about five years and they all work. So it's a, it's a really good system.

23:35-:That's awesome. And I think this has turned out to be a really balanced discussion. Neither one of us are saying go out and make everything smart right now. But each of us has also given a reason for why you might want to add a couple of smart things and kind of the benefits that that might bring to you. So I just have one last question, and this maybe is the most difficult, it certainly is for me, if someone is thinking about getting these smart things and they've decided, okay, this is my hub, this is my speaker that I have and I'm gonna stick with that.

24:19So I know at least that much now because they're are so many things on the market. If you're looking at smart lights or you're looking at a doorbell or you're looking at even a, a smart oven, what's your kind of process for researching and figuring out which is going to work without having to buy the thing first and discovering, oh nope, that's not gonna work, gotta return that.

24:42-:Yeah, and that's, that's a really good question because this is often the biggest challenge in our world is, you know, yes, you can review the top five air fryers and you'll find a million YouTube videos with all the suggestions in the world, but the question is what of those works for us as blind people? That's the challenge. My answer to that would be check out double tap. It's a great daily show. We talk about this stuff every day. Yeah, right. And you know, we do try and, and and we be a resource that's what we are for, right?

25:10We're here to, to be, not just to talk about this stuff, but invite you as the audience to come on and actually talk as well. And I remember doing an episode about microwaves and the amount of people who got in touch with different ideas from microwaves, from the, the cheapest to the most expensive and the smartest. And that's really what it's about. It's about just, you know, being a place where people can come and get the information. And we've try and, and, and create that information for you as well via our website, double tap on air.com.

25:37So, you know, do check it out because I think you, you'll learn something about whatever it might be. And we even did one on outdoor cooking recently and all the amazing tools that people use that are accessible and some of the simple stuff as well. You know, ultimately what I would say is if it comes to building a smart home, keep it simple. Start small. You don't have to buy all in one day, you don't have to do all that. Just take your time. As I say, start with a need because that's often what will drive you to do is start with what you need to do.

26:05Lighting is a good one, it's a good one to think about. I, I've had many blind people ask me, Ricky, this question, why is a blind person, do I even care if the lights are on or off? And and my answer to that is, well two things. One, I'm assuming you'd have people over occasionally, and if that's the case, you might want the lights on. But here's the other thing, when they leave, you wanna know those lights are off. Now these smart lights can turn themselves off at designated time.

26:29I have mindset, for example, to go with the sunset and the sunrise, so they will go off at sunset if they're on simple as that. And, and that is a way of knowing my lights are off. So it can actually work towards saving you money as well. And it it also be useful if you're not in your home. You can, you know, have your home lights come on as we used to do in the old days, we used to plug our lights into timers to turn our, you know, lights on and off when we were on holiday.

26:53Of course these days we just use our smart lights for that.

26:55-:Yeah, you're simulating that someone might be there. So yeah, absolutely. So many reasons to explore diving into this and I think lights make a, a nice place to start. And certainly reaching out to the community in Double Tap is a great example of learn from what other people have bought or share your good or bad experiences. I think that's what it's all about. Well, this has been so much fun, Stephen. It's always great to have you stopping by. Always very informative and hope to have you again sometime.

27:31We haven't scared you away yet, so No, not

27:33-:At all. You know, you never will. Excellent. Thank you Ricky. Thanks so much. Got something to say? Share your thoughts about this episode of Hadley Presents, or make suggestions for future episodes. We'd love to hear from you. Send us an email at [email protected]. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T at HadleyHelps.org or leave us a message at 847-784-2870. Thanks for listening.