As has often been the case in recent years, Amazon has been quite busy with new features and updates. In this extended interview, Shelly catches up with Peter Korn, Director of Accessibility for Amazon Lab 126 to learn about and hear a live demo of enhancements to Amazon's Fire TV's including a stand-alone model, and forthcoming access to Amazon Locker for package deliveries.
Blind Bargains audio coverage of CSUN 2018 is generously sponsored by the American Foundation for the Blind.
Transcript
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Hide transcriptTranscribed by Grecia Ramirez
Almost live from beautiful San Diego, it’s blindbargains.com coverage of CSUN 2018, featuring team coverage from across the Exhibit Hall and beyond, brought to you by the American Foundation for the Blind.
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Now, here’s Shelly Brisbin.
Shelly BRISBIN: Welcome back to Blind Bargains. We are at CSUN 2018, but we’re not on the show floor. We’re in the Amazon room, where they’ve been doing presentations all show. And I’m talking with Peter Korn, who is the Accessibility Director for Amazon’s Lab126.
Hi, Peter. Welcome to Blind Bargains.
PETER KORN: Hi, Shelly. It’s delightful to be here. Thanks.
SB: It’s great to have you back. And we talked a couple of years – well, we talked last year. I think we – maybe we’ll just make this an every-year kind of date, but I wanted to start by asking what’s new with Amazon, especially in terms of accessibility.
PK: We’ve been quite busy this past year. So looking, first, at our tablets, we have introduced braille input and output to Fire tablets, and we support a variety of braille displays with that functionality. It’s great for long-form reading Kindle Ebook but also for navigating all aspects of your tablet.
We also introduced a bunch of new commands and gestures to the VoiceView screen reader on Fire tablets; things like the “shut up” command, screen curtain, media on and off, as well as a dedicated key for talking to Alexa. And speaking of talking to Alexa, last year, we introduced a new 10-inch tablet, the Fire HD 10. And this new one we introduced includes what we call Wake Word Alexa. You don’t have to be touching the device. You can simply have it sitting on a desk near you, and you call out to her and she responds.
SB: Great. And I think it’s – at CSUN here, you’ve been showing a few other things as well, including accessible Amazon Locker, which we’ll talk about, and a television project too?
PK: Yeah. So we’ve had the Fire TV for a little while now. The Fire TV comes in a couple of sizes. I have, right here in my hand, the Fire TV Stick. The Fire TV Stick is –
SB: Hmm.
PK: -- like a big stick of gum. It has an HDMI port on one end, and on the side, it has a micro USB port for power. And this is thirty-nine ninety-five – sorry. Thirty-nine ninety-nine.
SB: I think I saw a sale on that pretty recently too, so --
PK: We have sales with some frequency, yes.
SB: Yeah.
PK: And then, we have the all-new Fire TV that is, sort of, rectangular or diamond-shaped, with a little pigtail coming off of it with the HDMI cable on that. And this Fire TV is a 4K Ultra, High-Definition, 60 frame per second, deep-color set-top box. And it is available for sixty-nine ninety-nine, although it, too, goes on sale.
And since CSUN last year, in addition to this new lower-priced 4K model, we have introduced Audio Description. We have nearly 400 titles that are audio described, and we have introduced magnification functionality. So our Fire TVs all can be magnified up to ten times magnification with focus tracking, and the magnifier works well with the VoiceView screen reader, so you can have magnification and speech at the same time.
And then, one last thing is we’re working with a company named Element Electronics, and they have taken Fire TV goodness and packaged it into an actual physical television. It’s called the Fire TV Edition television, and it comes in 43, 50, 55, and 65-inch models. And like the Fire TV Stick and the general model Fire TV, this includes VoiceView, it includes the magnifier, it includes Alexa. It also will tune over-the-air broadcast. We’ll take a look at that in a moment. And it supports Audio Description, closed captioning, all of that great stuff.
SB: Excellent. So a lot going on on the entertainment side, the Fire TV side. Terrific.
PK: There’s still more.
SB: But wait. There’s more. I knew that.
PK: So we have another device family: You may have heard of Echo and Alexa. And Alexa and Echo now come in several new form factors. c. The original tall Echo cylinder is now the Echo Plus. And the Plus has Zigbee Home Automation functionality built in so that you don’t need a separate hub to control lights and other Zigby devices for home automation.
And then, Echo has acquired a screen. We have the Echo Show and the Echo Spot, which are two models of the Echo product line with screens on them, which are attractive for folks who like to look at screens.
SB: Great. And I’m going to – I don’t know if we have those here, but I have questions about that – the screens from a low-vision point of view.
PK: We absolutely have them here, and, like all of our Fire OS devices with screens, the Echo Show and the Echo Spot include the VoiceView screen reader, include the Fire OS screen magnifier. So both of those options are available. And we’ll check both of those out in a minute.
But let’s start with TV Land. So if we can walk a little bit over here.
SB: So we’re standing in front of – this is the Fire TV Edition box, I take it?
PK: This is the Fire --
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Use left and right to move --
SB: Did I get the title right?
PK: Yes. This is the Fire TV Edition Smart TV. We are standing in front of the 55-inch model, and I am at the Home screen. The Home screen of the Fire TV Edition television is remarkably similar to that of the Fire TV. So I’m going to start by going through all of the functionality that is common to both, and then I will show you the special stuff that’s unique to the television model.
So here I am on the Home screen. I have just woken it up, and I am going to press Home. Sorry. I’m going to step away from Home and press Home just so you can see that experience.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Home, 2 of 7. Use left and right to move between items. Main menu: Contains top-level choices such as Search, Home, Movies, and Settings. When an item is selected, the lower portion of the screen updates to contain related content.
PK: So that is what you will hear when you land on the Home screen for the first time. There’s actually a little more you will hear when you first turn on the device, which is when you first plug it in after you unwrap it from receiving it from your delivery person. You will hear a periodic pinging tone, which lets you know that it’s awake and alive and looking for you to press the Home button on your remote to start pairing. Once that’s happened and it’s paired, you will hear a different tone to let you know that it’s time to press Play/Pause and start your registration process. At that point, you can turn on VoiceView and the entire rest of the registration process is read aloud with VoiceView.
The first time you launch VoiceView, it will take you through a tutorial, which, if you are familiar with VoiceView, you can exit immediately. You don’t have to wade through all of that if you’re experienced and don’t want it.
So we’ve done all of that. We’ve registered, we have gotten on the Wi-Fi, and now, we’re at the Home screen. And what you just heard is what you would hear when you land on the Home screen for the first time. And you hear three separate things. You first hear the object that has focus, Home. After a short pause, it gives you a usage hint. It let you know that to – at this location, you would move left and right to navigate within this menu. And then, after a bit longer, it gave you orientation text, telling you what this screen is and what you can do with it. And the orientation text, we provide for the first time, and any time you ask for it, on any screen, but we don’t give it to you once you become more familiar with things, again, unless you ask for it.
So I’m now going to arrow right across this menu to give you a sense of what’s here.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Your Videos, 3 of 7. Movies, 4 of 7.
PK: Oops.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: TV Shows, 5 of 7.
PK: I did a double-press.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Apps, 6 of 7. Settings, 7 of 7.
PK: And just because we’re here in Settings, I’m going to take you through the Accessibility Settings. I’m going to select this.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Inputs, 1 of 13. 1: Notifications, 2 of 13.
SB: And can I just pause to point out that, for low-vision users, what I see is a dark screen with very large, light buttons that have also very large labels. So if you have some vision, you may be able to walk through these buttons visually, or you may choose to use the speech. But they’re – the background and contrast is very evident.
PK: Thanks. And we can later turn on the screen magnifier and see, yet still, how much more large it can be.
SB: Uh-huh.
PK: So continuing across to the right.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Display and Sounds, 4 of 13. Applications, 5 of 13. Live TV, 6 of 13.
PK: And this is an option that our customers won’t find on Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. Only the Fire TV Edition Television that has a live TV option.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Controllers and Bluetooth Devices, 7 of 13. Alexa, 8 of 13. Preferences, 9 of 13. Device and Software, 10 of 13. Accessibility, 11 of 13. Help, 12 of 13. My Account, 13 of 13.
PK: Going to step back two now.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Help -- Accessibility, 11 of 13.
PK: Let’s select that.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Accessibility. Closed Caption, 1 of 4.
PK: And after a pause.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Use up and down to move between items. Show closed captions for videos when available.
PK: So again, we try to give you the additional information if you need or want it, but not give it to you immediately if you are familiar and want to move more quickly.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: VoiceView, 2 of 4.
PK: Pause.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Manage voice-guidance settings, including turning VoiceView on and off, reading speed, and volume.
PK: And you’ll notice we didn’t give you the usage hint again, move up and down, because you already know that.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Screen Magnifier, off, 3 of 4. Enables the use of button combinations to magnify the screen. High-contrast Text, experimental, off, 4 of 4. Changes text to black or white and adds a border.
PK: And so those are the four top-level accessibility options. I’m going to go back to VoiceView, and we can take a closer look at the VoiceView options.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: VoiceView. VoiceView screen reader. VoiceView: on, 1 of 7. Use up and down to move between items. Provides spoken feedback as you navigate items on the screen. Reading Speed: 1X, normal, 2 of 7. Adjust how quickly VoiceView speaks.
PK: We have a whole bunch of settings from 0.66X all the way up to 4X, normal reading speed, just like we do with VoiceView on the Fire tablets and on Kindle Ereaders.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Speech Volume: 40 percent of device volume, 3 of 7. Adjust the volume of VoiceView speech.
PK: This allows you to change the relative volume of VoiceView from what you might be listening to from movies.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Sounds volume: 40 percent of device volume, 4 of 7. Adjust the volume of VoiceView sounds.
PK: And this is very similar, but it’s for the earcoms, the clicks and beeps and bops that you hear alongside the speech.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Key-echo Characters, 5 of 7. Adjust what is announced when entering text.
PK: This is all carry-over from tablet and from desktop screen readers in general, what punctuation and other things -- sorry. Not what punctuation, what echoing do you want at the character or word or both?
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Punctuation level: Some, 6 of 7. Adjust how much punctuation VoiceView speaks.
PK: And then finally –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: VoiceView Tutorial, 7 of 7. Learn how to use the VoiceView screen reader.
PK: At any time, the customer can rerun the tutorial. If they don’t remember something or want to get a refresher and brush up on it.
So let’s go back to Home and explore more of the TV.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Home, 2 of 7. Use left and right –
PK: Hush. One of the first things you do when you create a screen reader is you make it talk.
SB: Yeah.
PK: The second thing you do when you make a screen reader is you make it shut up.
SB: Exactly.
PK: So the Play/Pause button on the remote is the “shut up” key.
SB: And the remote is the same for all of the Amazon Fire TV iterations; is that right?
PK: So the Fire TV stick and the Fire TV4K model, it’s the same remote. For the television, we add a few more buttons. We have a Volume Up/Down, as you would expect from a television. We have a Power, On/Off, which is an infrared signal. All of the other signals are wireless, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth. And then we have three dedicated buttons: A Prime Video button, a Netflix button, and then at the bottom, a music – Prime Music button. And that’s just to immediately launch Netflix or immediately launch Prime Video or Music.
SB: Okay.
PK: So I’m going to press the Down arrow now, and I’m going to take us into the bulk of the Home screen.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Daddy’s home, watch now, 1 of 5. Recent: Blu-ray button. Use up and down to move between categories such as New Releases or Comedy. Use Left and Right to move between items in the category, Blu-ray, HDMI 1.
PK: So when I went down the first time, we came to what we call internally, the Hero Rotator. And this is a collection of things that we rotate through. You can press Left and Right to go through them, of current topics that we might be – of interest to you. So shows that are current – it’s kind of like an advertising, hey. Here’s what’s new. Here’s what’s going on.
SB: So that’s not based on my preferences or past viewing. That’s based on, just, basically, what you guys are promoting that’s most recent?
PK: I honestly don’t know. I honestly don’t know.
SB: Well, either way, there’s probably going to be some action and adventure going on to get your attention, I would imagine.
PK: And each of these have a preview. So you heard a preview of the show that we were inviting you to check out.
SB: Right.
PK: So now I’m on the Recent row. And these are things that I’ve done recently on this device. And I’m going to continue on arrowing downward.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Your Apps and Games. Netflix. Netflix, press to move or manage this app. Sponsored: Rolex, Watch Now button.
SB: Watch now. That’s funny.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: The Art of Filmmaking. Rolex celebrates four Oscar -- registered sign-- winning directors whose timeless work continues to –
PK: Hush. So we have a Sponsored row. Continuing on, we’re going to come to two rows that are, again, unique to the television.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: On now presents – Daystar Presents, 5 P.M. to 5:30 P.M. Up next -- rated TVG. Closed caption –
PK: Hush.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Inputs: antenna, 1 of 7 button.
PK: So these are the different inputs into your TV. And now, we come to the things that are, again, common to all Fire TV models.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Recommended TV: Absentia, season 1, Prime button. Absentia, 4.0 out of 5 starts from 842 customers. IMDB Rating: 7.3 out of 10, 2018. Season 1 centers on an FBI agent who disappears without a trace while hunting a serial killer.
PK: So I’m going to describe in a little bit more detail what’s going on here. On the screen -- in roughly the middle of the screen, we have this row or carousel of Prime-recommended TV shows. And as I arrow right and left through this row, through this carousel, I see other items that are recommended TV. And above this, in the top third of the screen is a bunch of information about these selected items. And I read that information after a pause. And as you may have noticed, there’s, kind of, a lot of information there.
SB: Right.
PK: And, you know, if what you want to know is the synopsis of the show or the TV rating, you want to know whether you might want to watch this with your young children, you have to kind of wait and wade through it, which is maybe a little frustrating. So what we did with VoiceView is we – in these situations, allow you to use the Fast Forward and Rewind buttons to quickly skip forward through that information. So I’m going to go to the right to another recommended TV show. And after it announces the show and a brief pause and it starts going into that big description, I’m going to start pressing the Fast Forward button to skip forward through it. Like that --
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Phillip K Dick's, Electric Dreams, season 1, prime button.
PK: Pause.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Phillip K Dick's –
PK: Fast Forward.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Group up –
PK: Fast Forward. Fast Forward.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: IMDB 2007 – rated TVMA. Closed captioning available. Season 1.
PK: Wait a minute. What was that rating? Backward. Backward.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Season 1, closed caption. Rated TVMA. Closed captioning –
PK: Ah. Hush. And in that fashion, I can move much more quickly because, well, I should be in control. I shouldn’t have to wait through the stuff I don’t want to listen to.
SB: If Audio Description was available, would it also have said that?
PK: Not today.
SB: Had to ask though.
PK: Absolutely. And as it turns out, Audio Description is available for this. This is one of our shows, and all of the new Prime original series, like Phillip K Dick’s Electric Dreams or all-new Amazon original movies, like Wonderstruck, have Audio Description today. Just out of the gate. There’s still some Prime original series, some Amazon original movies that were out some time ago before we introduced Audio Description, and we haven’t caught up with that backlog yet. But we’re working through it.
SB: Okay.
PK: So now, let’s take a look at Phillip K Dick's Electric Dreams.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Phillip K Dick’s Electric Dreams. Watch again, 1 of 3. Use Left and Right to move between items.
PK: So I’m on a button, and it gave me the text. It told me the screen, Phillip K Dick’s Electric Dreams. It read me the focused button, and after a pause, it gave me the usage hint. But I can, at any time, press the Menu key and get all the information about what’s going on on this screen, like I’m going to do now.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Use Left and Right to move between items. Details: Contains info about a video or app and buttons in a row, like Watch Now or Get. Additional rows of related content are below these options. Phillip K Dick’s Electric Dreams: 4.5 out of 5 stars from 1071 customers. IMDB rating: 7.3 out of 10. Season 1, episode 1. Air date: January 11, 2018. Rated TVMA. Closed captioning available. Starring Dominic Capone III, Juke Hardy, Russ Panzarella. Audio: English. Subtitles: English. Watch again.
PK: So have you ever wondered how actors’ names are spelled?
SB: Sometimes. Yes.
PK: So VoiceView on Fire TV includes a Review mode. And a long-press of the Menu key will turn the Review mode on.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Review Mode on.
PK: And then I use the Left and Right buttons of my four-way controller to move through the items item at a time. A long-press of Left will bring me to the top.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Phillip K Dick’s Electric Dreams.
PK: And then I can move through this an item at a time.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: 4.0 out of – IMDB rating -- season 1 – air date: January 11 – rated TVMA. Closed caption – real life – our future – starring Dominic Capone III, Juke Hardy, Russ Panzarella.
PK: Geo cardy? I’m not sure what that name was.
SB: Right.
PK: So I’m going to change the Review Mode granularity by pressing the Down and Up buttons in either order to go through the granularity in either direction. I’m going to go by Down.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Character, word, item, character, word.
PK: So let’s move by Word to get to this geocardy thing.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Dominic Capone, three, Juke --
PK: Oh. Juke. How is that spelled?
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Character. J-u-k-e, echo.
PK: So we will allow you to navigate through this a character at a time. If the character is capitalized, we use a higher pitch. And after a pause, we will give you the phonetic spelling. So this is the actress’s name. Juke.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Space, H-a-r-d-y, Yankee.
SB: Ah.
PK: And so Juke Hardy is where I was getting that geo thing wrong with. And now, you can get all of that just by using VoiceView and the Review mode.
So let’s watch this. I’m going to get out of Review mode by pressing the Menu key with a long-press.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Review mode off. Watch again, 1 of 3.
PK: And it automatically goes –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Use Left and Right to move –
PK: Hush. It automatically goes back to the focused item, that watch now button. And I’m going to press it.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Loading. Real life.
TV announces: Different versions of us –
PK: And every so often, when you go to watch something, you get a little add for something else. That’s what we just got. So I’m going to press Pause –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Pause.
PK: -- and then I’m going to press the Menu button twice. Because the Menu button is the VoiceView button, when I actually want to send a Menu-press to the Fire TV, I need to escape it. So I press it twice in quick succession.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Menu. Phillip K Dick's Electric Dreams. Season 1, episode 1: Real Life. Next episode –
PK: I’m going to arrow up.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Watch from beginning. Subtitles and audio languages.
PK: I’m going to select this.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Audio language: English, drop-down list.
PK: I’m going to select that.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Audio language: English, 1 of 2, checkbox, checked. Arrow down.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Audio language: English, audio description, 2 of 2.
SB: There we go.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: -- checkbox not checked.
PK: I’m going to check it by selecting.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Phillip K Dick's Electric Dreams, season 1, episode 1: Real Life. Audio languages: 2. Audio language: English, audio description, drop-down list.
PK: Having selected Audio Description, I will get Audio Description from here on out. I don’t have to do this each and every time. But this is how you turn it on and off on any given show.
What else do we have here?
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Subtitle language: English, CC, drop-down list.
PK: Going to go ahead and turn closed captioning off.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: English, CC: off, 1 of 2. Phillip K Dick's Electric Dreams, Season 1, episode 1: Real life. Audio languages, 2. Subtitle language: Off, drop-down list.
PK: And now, I’m going to press Back so we can continue watching.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Loading. PKD, Electric Dreams, main title, 1 of 1. 1 items.
TV announces: Robots hover near a building. A girl looks at a colorful night sky. See creatures float in midair. Luminescent moths land on a bulb. Floating sill wets of babies hold hands. A pregnant man holds his belly.
PK: Pause.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Pause.
PK: So this is the very visual title sequence to the Electric Dreams series. I’m going to resume and press Fast Forward several times to skip forward through this title sequence.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Play. Skip forward. Skip forward. Skip forward 10.
PK: And now, we’re in the program.
SB: And how far forward or back does it skip by default?
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Pause.
PK: Each skip forward and back is by 10 seconds.
SB: Okay.
PK: And that, in a nutshell, is the Fire TV experience.
Now, I want to show you the few additional things that are unique to the television addition. So we’re going to go to home.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Home, 2 of 7. Loading.
PK: And I’m going to –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Use Left and Right to move between items –
PK: Hush. I’m going to do a long-press on the Home button to bring up the television menu.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Channel Guide, 1 of 6 button.
PK: And let’s see what’s in this menu.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Use Up and Down to move between items.
PK: Ah. So this is a vertical menu. So I move up and down.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Inputs, 2 of 6 button. Apps, 3 of 6 button. Set a Sleep Timer, 4 of 6 button. Picture, 5 of 6 button. Sound, 6 of 6 button.
PK: So in addition to the volume controls, I can adjust the volume and sound here. I have picture controls for contrast and brightness. I can set a sleep timer, apps, inputs, and what I’m going to show you next, the Channel Guide.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Channel Guide, 1 of 6 button. Friday, March 23, guide. Vertical bar, 5:41 P.M., Friday March 23. Nine items. Program information, currently unavailable. Channel Guide. Use Up and Down to move between channels. Use Left and Right to move between programs – search a channel. Channel list tracks. Station name Azteca. Friday, March 23, Azteca.
PK: So here, in the bowels of the hotel, I don’t get a lot of antenna reception. So most of these programs that I’m getting are actually from Mexico, and they’re coming in over the water. And we don’t have program guide information for most of them. There is one channel we are receiving here. And I’m going to arrow down to it and show you the Channel Guide experience that you will get in most places of the United States.
Oops. Come on.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Jungle. Watch now. Reflections: 5:30 P.M. to 6 P.M. Station name: Daystar. Friday, March 23. Scenic landscapes accompanied by hymns and scripture. Reflections: 5:30 P.M. to 6 P.M. Rated TVG. Up next: Jonathan Bernis, Jewish Voice.
PK: And if I arrow to the right, I can go through the programs that are to come.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Jonathan Bernis, Jewish voice: 6 P.M. to 6:30 P.M.
PK: And again.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: John Hagee: 6:30 P.M. to 7 P.M. Andrew Wommack, Gospel Truth: 7 P.M. to 7:30 P.M.
PK: But let’s go back to the beginning to the current time --
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Friday, March 23 – reflections: 5:30 –
PK: -- and watch it.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Daystar. Reflections. Player chrome. Use Down button to bring up on Now row.
TV starts playing in Spanish.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Home, 2 of 7.
PK: And back home I go.
Now, in addition –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Use Left and Right to move –
PK: Hush. In addition to pulling broadcast transmission from over the air and, yes, we will also play Audio Described over-the-air broadcast – you can plug in four HDMI inputs and a component input and a composite input into your television. I happen to have a Blu-ray player plugged into HDMI-1.
Now, everything I’ve been doing, I’ve been doing using the remote. But Alexa is here. So I can also use Alexa for many of these things. For example, I can do this.
Switch input to Blu-ray.
Alexa: Okay.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Input switched. Your TV input has been – no signal detected. Input list button.
PK: So it nicely went to switch to Blu-ray, and then it found that the Blu-ray player was turned off. And up came an error message and VoiceView faithfully read the error message. I’m going to grab the remote for the Blu-ray player and turn the Blu-ray player on.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: No signal detected. Input list button.
PK: And the Blu-ray player is coming on and is now being displayed. And in a few moments, the Blu-ray player will finish booting up, and the talking interface on this Sony Blu-ray player will hopefully start -- unless I turned that off -- and we will hear the speech of the Blu-ray player.
SB: And this Blu-ray player has its own interface that – I don’t know if that – does the Amazon Fire TV have any –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Software version is available. Please go to the set-up function –
SB: -- impact on the interface or – that’s just whatever the Blu-ray player is?
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: -- update. For details on updates, see the Sony homepage.
PK: Clearly, I haven’t updated the operating system of this Blu-ray player.
SB: Oh well.
PK: -- but it wants to do that. Well, let’s leave that for now. Let’s go back to Home.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Home, 2 of 7.
PK: But that gives you a sense –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Use Left and Right to move between –
PK: Hush. That gives you a sense of what you can do. If you had an Apple TV, you would have the talking interface from the Apple TV or the talking interface of Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony’s PlayStation 4, and you would use that remote and that interface for that device when plugged into this TV.
SB: Right.
PK: There you have it.
SB: Great. So I guess only one question about the Home screen there. You have it fully populated with a bunch of services. Is that the way it arrives, or would I need to configure the – slide over services I have to be on the Home screen and –
PK: This is pretty much as it arrives. There are some services on here – because I am a Netflix subscriber, if I go down here --
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Daddy’s – Recent. Your Apps and Games. Netflix. Use Left and Right to move between items. Use up and down to move between categories such as New Releases or Comedy. Use Left and –
PK: Hush. And I select Netflix.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Netflix. Altered Carbon, 1 of 40 button. Download – you own it button.
PK: Because I actually already own Netflix, because it knows my account and I have Netflix at home, the interface here is ever so slightly different. Instead of, Get Netflix, or Launch Netflix, it’s Download Netflix because I have it, but not on this device.
SB: Got it.
PK: But otherwise, this is the user interface as you would get it.
SB: Okay.
PK: Over time, it will change because what promotions and what things are available change, and those will be added to the interface. So we have a – a few months ago, we added CBS All Access to our channels lineup. So that appeared in the Home screen, and it wasn’t there prior.
SB: But if I had that service, would I have been able to add it on my own before you made it a Home screen button or no?
PK: Oh. Yes. Absolutely.
SB: Okay. So I just would have done what I would typically do. I would navigate to a place where you could search for those channels, and then I can add it to my Home screen and –
PK: Uh-huh.
SB: Yeah. Okay.
PK: And, I mean with – well, I’ll go ahead and start downloading Netflix just so I can show that. We don’t have the fastest network connection here.
SB: No.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Netflix. Ready to launch.
SB: Well, there we go.
PK: And I’m going to go to the Home screen.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Home, 2 of 7.
PK: And I’m going to use Alexa.
Netflix.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Netflix, four items. Apps and Games.
PK: Oops.
Open Netflix.
Alexa: Here’s Netflix.
PK: And now, I’ve immediately launched Netflix. I have to log in and so on on this device.
SB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
PK: -- I’m not going to do that, but the Netflix interface talks.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: On the Netflix sign-up and sign-in screen. Watch TV shows and movies anytime, anywhere. Questions? 1866-579 --
PK: Sorry. Just went back to home there. One of the things --
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Use Left and Right to move between –
PK: One of the things – Netflix is a complete talking interface. You can get Audio Descriptions on Netflix. Netflix is a self-voicing application. So you notice the volume was a little louder when Netflix ran? It's not picking up the VoiceView volume level because VoiceView isn’t running when Netflix is self-voicing. So you don’t have features like spelling and Review mode. But it, nonetheless, is a fully talking interface, and you have full access to Netflix and audio described content.
SB: So what’s my experience in an app that may not have its own talking interface? Like – and I don’t know what the status of CBS All Access is, but let’s just pick on it because it’s one we spoke about.
PK: Well, I have to go download it and install it.
SB: Okay. Well – okay. We don’t need to do that, but I guess what I’m saying is for an app that isn’t as advanced as Netflix, shall we say –
PK: Well, there’s actually two directions. There’s an app like Hulu that was – that uses all of the Fire OS user interface controls, and it will behave fairly similar. It may not have the usage hints. It may not have the description content available for pressing overview. But it will work as you would expect with VoiceView. You can do all of the navigation options. You have Review mode, you can spell things. And there are some apps, I’m not going to name names here on this podcast --
SB: Fair enough.
PK: -- that aren’t accessible.
SB: Okay.
PK: And if they are important to you, I would invite you to let the makers of those apps know.
SB: Does Amazon have any sort of program or guidelines for developers so if someone comes to you and says, my users say I should become accessible, what – to VoiceView -- what do I do? Is that the right nomenclature they would need to have the hooks to VoiceView to make themselves accessible?
PK: That’s exactly the right nomenclature. And developer.amazon.com is where we have all of our developer documentation. There’s a whole section on how to work well with VoiceView, general information about using the accessibility API, which applies to tablets and TV and is basically the Android guidance rewritten by us, plus, our extensions to the Android accessibility framework as part of our enhancements to accessibility in Fire OS. So things like hints and overview text and description text.
SB: If you don’t want to call out names of folks that aren’t as accessible, do you want to say instances in which apps have done a real good job? We mentioned Netflix. Are there any others that you want to particularly praise?
PK: Well, Hulu.
SB: Okay. So Netflix and Hulu – well, that’s a lot of TV right there. Netflix and Hulu. You got a lot covered. Okay. Sounds good.
PK: Great.
So if you’d like, we can go check out some of the Echo devices.
SB: Sounds great.
PK: Oh. We didn’t show the magnifier.
SB: Okay. Well – we can talk about it briefly, I guess.
PK: Or you can describe it. While they’re clearing the floor out, I’ll just --
SB: All right. Sounds good.
PK: -- just turn the magnifier on and you can tell –
SB: You mentioned – the speech mentioned that it goes up to 10X, I think. I think you might have said so.
PK: That’s the – I said so. So I’m going to go turn the magnifier on.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Okay button.
PK: So we’ve just turned on the magnifier.
SB: So you didn’t have to go all the way through to Accessibility Settings to make that happen?
PK: We have shortcuts.
SB: Oh.
PK: We have shortcuts to turn the magnifier on, which is the Back and Fast Forward buttons for two seconds, as well as for turning the screen reader on and off, which is Back and Menu for two seconds. So I’ve just turned on the magnifier. It’s magnified to 2X, and it has a dialogue box with instructions. Screen magnifier, when zoomed in, view area will follow the focused item. Use these button combinations to control the magnifier. Hold Back and Fast Forward to enable or disable the magnifier; press Menu and Play/Pause to enable and disable Zoom; Menu plus Fast Forward to zoom in; Menu plus Rewind to zoom out; Menus Up, Down, Left, and Right to pan up, down left, and right.
SB: And now –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Home, 2 of 7.
SB: -- are we reviewing that at 2X or 1X when using that screen?
PK: We’re now –
SB: That’s 2X.
PK: Hush.
We’re now at 2X, and everything is at 2X.
SB: Okay. I guess what I was getting at is the instructions themselves are on – their light print on a grayish, darkish background, and so they’re pretty easy to read. And they didn’t look like they were – they’re not as large as what we’re seeing on the screen now, but they seem fairly big print.
PK: Yeah.
SB: -- by default.
PK: -- and there’s a lot of text to fit on that screen, which –
SB: Of course. Yeah.
PK: -- is why we wanted to keep it all there and not force you to pan. So let’s increase the magnification. What am I doing wrong?
SB: So it’s magnified the size of the items on screen. We’ve got the banner above that promotes the program and the text for the name of the show –
PK: Oh. That’s what I’m doing wrong.
SB: -- is bigger, and then it looks like the buttons – oh, wow. Really big now. So we’re zooming in on the banner –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Your Videos, 3 of 7.
SB: And then we have text in a really big, big size.
PK: The word, Your Videos, is almost the width of the screen.
SB: Right.
PK: And the word –
SB: And it’s highlighted. You’ve got a box, a rectangle, around it. And it’s, again, light text on a dark background.
PK: And that highlight is there, in part, because VoiceView is also running, and VoiceView uses a green highlighted rectangle.
SB: Okay. So that highlight isn’t part of magnifier, it’s part of VoiceView?
PK: Correct.
SB: So if I want the highlight, I probably would have VoiceView on, but that’s significant magnification, so either way, I think for a lot of people, that would be helpful.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Movies, 4 of 7. TV Shows, 5 of 7. Apps, 6 of 7.
PK: And if I arrow down –
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Featured, 1 of 3. 1 of 6. Spotlight button. Entertainment, NCAA March madness live for Fire TV button.
SB: So it’s worth noting that you’re not just magnifying the labels that are in the OS, you’re magnifying everything on screen. Because this is like, promotional text from the programmer, and it’s really, really big so –
PK: Let’s zoom out a little bit.
SB: Yeah.
PK: So this is the currently focused item in the entertainment carousel.
SB: And that’s much larger than the ones next to it that aren’t – don’t have focus.
PK: Right. And so this magnification carries through everything except the TV show itself. So when you’re watching a show, that isn’t magnified. But everything related to it is.
SB: Got it.
PK: So that’s the magnifier.
SB: Awesome.
PK: So this is the Echo Show. It has a 7-inch diagonal screen. And I’m going to unmute it, and I’m going to swipe down from the top to get to Settings.
SB: The volume’s a little lower.
PK: And I’m going to scroll up to Accessibility.
You’re hearing something else over there.
SB: Oh. Okay. Oh.
PK: And the screen magnifier’s already on. So a triple-tap turns the magnifier on, and it operates just like on the Fire tablet. So pinch-zoom to increase or decrease the magnification, two fingers to pan it around, triple-tap to turn it off.
SB: And again, by default, you’ve got lighter text on a darker background.
PK: Uh-huh. And I have the VoiceView screen reader here as well.
COMPUTERIZED VOICE: VoiceView ready. VoiceView screen reader. Quick actions dismissed.
PK: And you’ll notice the voice is the Alexa voice on an Alexa device like this. And I’ve said her name, so I have woken her up.
SB: Yes. As happens so often.
PK: So that’s just a very quick taste of –
SB: Sure.
PK: -- this. The features you would normally expect as far as VoiceView interactions and magnification just like on your fire tablets are here.
SB: Great.
PK: Finally, before we end, I should just mention that here at the CSUN conference, we announced talking lockers. Amazon Lockers are a way for customers to receive packages without having them delivered to their home. They might be uncomfortable with packages being left on their doorstep and so can instead, select delivery to one of any number of lockers in major metropolitan areas. We have thousands of these worldwide. Last year, we introduced the first accessibility feature to Amazon Lockers, which was lower height selection. You could choose to have items delivered in a locker slot that was between 15 inches and 48 inches from the ground, which is great for folks in wheelchairs, or who may just not be able to reach very high or very low.
And here at CSUN, we are showing the talking locker functionality. The new talking lockers will have a braille label that invites you to insert your headphone into the headphone jack, a tactile keypad with a raised bump on the number 5 key, and raised symbols on the other four buttons beyond the numbers – Enter, Clear, Cancel, and volume adjustment. And the entire experience is a spoken experience once you insert your headphones.
SB: And I happened to see the demo the other day, and the thing I noticed was that it also identifies your choice, whether you want a locker that is at a lower height. And I believe it identifies which locker is going to open as – whenever you’ve entered your code correctly. And so you know where your package is going to come from and which direction the door opens from and things like that.
PK: Yeah. And the speaking interface has a lot of description about the layout of the lockers, where you can find your package, and then when you go to receive it, as the door opens and you hear a beeping tone to help you locate where that open slot is.
SB: So all the products we’ve talked about today, I believe, are available now. When will the lockers be rolling out?
PK: We are rolling those out this summer.
SB: Okay. And over – I assume it’s going to take a while to get to all of the – how many Amazon lockers are out there at this point?
PK: We have thousands worldwide.
SB: Thousands. Right. So it’s – I assume it’s going to take you – are there places that you’re beginning with the accessible lockers?
PK: I don’t have the details of which lockers will be getting this functionality when, but I assure you, it’s something we are eager to do as quickly as we can.
SB: Great.
Well, obviously, if folks want more information about what Amazon is doing, amazon.com would be the place to start; right?
PK: It is absolutely the place to start. Specifically, amazon.com/accessibility. And that is the one-stop shop for all accessibility information about all things Amazon.
SB: Great. Thanks so much for being on the show, peter.
PK: It’s been my pleasure, Shelly. I look forward to doing it again next year.
SB: Absolutely.
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Category: ShowsDisplaying 1 comment.
gallagher123123 Thursday, 29-Mar-2018 4:23 PM ET:WOw. Amazon is doing a great job making their products accessible. Out of everything I heard in this podcast, I am especially excited about the accessibility coming to the Amazon Lockers. Can't wait to try that out.
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