﻿Audio file
OrbitResearchOctober2026ZoomMeeting.mp3
Transcript
[Note: This transcript was automatically generated. It will contain transcription errors. Frequent speakers were labeled, while infrequent ones are only identified with numbers.]

Robert Carter
hello everybody. This is Robert, your host today for the Orbit Research October meeting. Welcome. It's almost Halloween. We'll try not to scare you too badly today. Anyway, I hope everybody is well and I'm so glad you're here. As always, we'd like to begin this monthly review of what's going on with Orbit Research by asking Venkatesh to please unmute yourself, sir, and Please give us an update on what's happening at Orbit Research.

Venkatesh Chari
Thanks for organizing this, Robert. Thanks everyone for joining. It's a pleasure. I do have certain some updates. I think you folks might have already seen some of the announcements that we made about two weeks ago. So we have now got the Amazon Alexa Android app running on both the Orbit Speak and the Orbit player. And this is available to everyone over the air. It is able to do everything that the typical Android installation does. And whatever skills, accounts, facilities you have available through it should more or less be available. Some of them depend on geography and things like that. There are certain limitations which are from the app itself. But I think by and large, most folks should find it usable. It responds to the wake word as well. So the response so far has been pretty exciting and excited, I would say, I should say. And we are looking to more feedback. We did try to explain and clarify that this is provided on an as its basis in the sense that we don't really have control over how it behaves. It is a third-party app. We install it on our devices and our screen reader is able to read whatever screens represented. And the nice thing about Alexa is, of course, that once you turn it on, then a lot of the interaction can be purely by voice. So that reduces much of the screen reader related dependencies. So that was kind of the big news of last month. We hope that with this new architecture and the new screen reading, facilities that we have developed, we'll be able to bring on board other third-party apps as well. Last time we had asked for inputs. Those are really, really helpful. Please keep them coming and we'll try to do the best we can. And for release 2.4 in October, we had originally planned for this in early October, early to mid-October, but this has been delayed a little bit due to various infrastructure issues. We have released this yesterday as a beta release. received some good feedback, working on the bug fixes, and we expect to release it to the general public in November. So that will bring a new book reader application with a redesigned interface, more file browser-like interface without the need to necessarily have a book library or bookshelf. reading experience itself will also be redesigned and will have some of the facilities that have been asked for quite some time, such as cursor navigation, character by character, going to the beginning or end, improved search facilities, et cetera. And there'll be certain facilities that'll be more relevant to the orbit speed than to the orbit player and vice versa. Also, an improved experience when navigating rich text elements, such as headings, tables, lists, et cetera, and you'll find that the file loading speed is much faster, almost twice as fast. We also added support for some. additional file types. So now you can also open PowerPoint files as well as the older Word document files, the dot DOC. It has always been possible to open DOCX files and also open Office document files, the Mobi format files and FB2 files as well. We've also added support for synchronized DAISY text and audio playback. So you'll have For initial releases, you'll have two choices. Either you can read either using the screen reader or through the independent playback text to speech. We are going to add direct sort of built-in support for the libraries. one at a time. You will of course have the existing reader still available while we phase in the full functionality of the new reader. But hopefully we'll be able to transition to the new reader with all of its improved facilities very soon. There are several bug fixes also in this release. There was an issue of the Orbit Speak not connecting to smartphones sometimes when waking up. Also, the third party Android app interaction had some issues, so those have been fixed. Also, there were issues reported by folks here last month from amongst the audience where they found that the TTS voices were changing while restarting or applying an update. So those issues have also been addressed. So it's going to be quite an exciting release. We're pretty excited about it. So we'll have announcements coming out in the next couple of weeks. We'll try our best to get them out as quickly as possible. And all of that applies to both Orbit Speak and Orbit Player as well. On our Braille products, we have new releases coming out basically this week. There is a new release for Orbit Reader 20, the standard and the Plus product, where we have made some improvements for navigation with Narrator. in HID Braille mode. So Narrator now supports HID Braille, which is great and makes things much easier to set up and use. It's plug and play. And so we have made some changes to enable panning keys to work properly to navigate and so on. Also, some other bug fixes, certain menu items were displayed only by default in English instead of showing all of the available languages. And some of these are specific to certain releases and certain versions of the unit. So these details will all be in the release announcements. So please look at it and confirm that it is applicable to to your unit as well. These are not critical if your current usage doesn't require these features. So you don't necessarily have to update. We also made some improvements for certain languages for where the localization, the translation features have been improved. some of the back translation for certain Indian languages was not accurate. You also have for including a really exciting feature which allows users to use the tactile panel as a touchpad to control the your pointer, the cursor on their Windows PC. And this is really great because you can move your cursor to the text and have your screen reader announce those either with voice or with Braille. Also several other features such as have to zoom various improvements in the navigation of images, etc. On the Graffiti Plus also, we have a release planned this week, which has several in HDMI mode, reviewing and zooming and panning in HDMI mode. New options for selecting resolution and frame rate have been provided. And we also have a slide show option, so you can, if you have a bunch of files in a folder, they can be scrolled through automatically. We've also included visual fonts for display of various system messages. So of course, by default, they are in Braille, but If there is a teacher or someone who wishes to read them visually, we also have an option to just switch to visual fonts. Also, these get hidden automatically while mode, so they don't interfere with your drawing. We'll also have an update for the Arbit Reader Q20 and Q40 products. There is a release that will add a fifth language profile. So it allows you to configure more languages, more flexibility, et cetera. In November, we also have a release planned for the Slate products where there are basically certain bug fixes related to the search functionality. So that's the news on the on the hardware products. Apart from that, we continue to have very positive feedback about the Orbit Flow, which has now been shipping for a couple of months now. And I just want to remind people of the subsidy program that we are running the grant program with the NGO Voice of Specially Abled People, through which there is a substantial discount subsidy on the Orbitrator 20, the Orbitrator 20 plus, and the Orbitrator, sorry, the Orbit Player. So there is now a subsidy of that brings the price of the Orbit player down to $99 and for the Orbit reader 20 to 399 and the Orbitrator 20 plus to 499. So these are substantial subsidies and so please spread the word. If folks are interested, they can apply online. It might take a little bit of time for a response because there's certain, I think, maintenance going on their website, but it is certainly open to apply. So those are updates from my side, Robert. I'll pass the microphone back to you.

Robert Carter
Very good. Thanks for all that information. Excellent stuff going on. Bobby, please unmute yourself and go ahead when you're ready.

Speaker 3
Hey, Robert and guys, gang and Vengatesh. Nice to talk to you again. I'm having a little minor, it's very minor with the Alexa app. I love it. It's really, really working good. And I think it's great. The only minor thing is you can't link certain music services with the Alexa app on the Orbit player because I try to link Spotify and it's says you're running Android 11, but you have to have 12 or later in order to make the Spotify linking work. Not all services, some of them you can't link. There's no way to link them with the Orbit player. So I'm wondering if that could ever be fixed or is there a workaround we can do?

Venkatesh Chari
That's a very good question, Bobby. It's quite honestly a little bit surprising to me because only fully understand the way Alexa processes these kinds of links and requests. I would have thought that it connects to your Spotify account or other accounts sort of on the server side in the cloud and that it would not care which version of Android you are running locally on your device. But clearly that's my assumption there is incorrect. So I can definitely take it back to the team and see if they have any ideas about that. The challenge for us is that other than trying to see if there is a workaround, there is really nothing we can do about it. If it is, yes, we are internally running Android 11 and if for some reason Alexa, even though Alexa runs fine, if for some reason to link Spotify needs a higher version of Android, then that would remain a challenge.

Speaker 3
Yeah, because what was I going to say? I wish there was a way to do it because I ran into the same situation with my Blind Shell plus the Orbit player, they're all running Android 11 and neither one of them will let me link Spotify. I know that this isn't the best place for this here, but what's the best bet? Like, is there a way to link Spotify on Windows if you really can't link it on a portable device?

Venkatesh Chari
That's a good question. I honestly couldn't tell you.

Speaker 3
I want to link the music streaming service.

Venkatesh Chari
Let me take it back to the team and see if we can do a little digging and come up with some suggestions. I unfortunately don't use Spotify myself, so I don't really know exactly how it gets configured and how it works. But we'll definitely check on it and let you know.

Speaker 3
Otherwise, the good news is the other services, some other services do link to the Alexa account, which is nice.

Venkatesh Chari
Right, Yeah, we've had folks linking all kinds of stuff, you know, from the popular Kindle and Audible accounts to various podcasts and so on. So this is great feedback, Bobby. I'm glad you're letting us know.

Speaker 3
So Spotify is a no-go, and that's all I have to say.

Venkatesh Chari
OKOK, that is that is very good to know. Thank you.

Robert Carter
Thank you, Bobby. All right, Mitchell, please unmute and go ahead when you're ready.

Speaker 4
OK, I have a dash.

Venkatesh Chari
Hey Michelle.

Speaker 4
Got a question. Have you thought about making that media player so you could use #4 to go backward? Say you're listening to a playlist that's got a bunch of files in it and you want to get to file 80, like 82 for instance, setting the number 4 to go backward in that media player like you could do with a stream with the number 4.

Venkatesh Chari
I see. So you're saying go back in the list of files?

Speaker 4
Yeah.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay. That is, that's very interesting. So would you then also want like 6 to go forward?

Speaker 4
Yeah, stick forward. No, I mean, hold on. I got, I got my player. Hold on. Let me wake it up.

Venkatesh Chari
Sure.

Speaker 4
Welcome back. It was the same Max. Chapter 4. Okay. Three for forward and one for backward. Sorry, wrong numbers.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay. So that's what you would like to have.

Speaker 4
Yeah. And there's a podcast called Garthology that for some reason is not letting me pull episodes. If you type in the word GARTH in the pod in the search for podcast, you can find it, subscribe to it, and it's not pulling data.

Venkatesh Chari
I'm sorry, would you mind spelling that?

Speaker 4
GARTH.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay. Garth. Okay. And so the podcast, the podcast is called Garth.

Speaker 4
The podcast is Garthology.

Venkatesh Chari
Garthology. Okay. All right. And it's not working through this. Does it work with other platforms like on your phone?

Speaker 4
Yeah, my phone it works. I was able to do it on a Windows OS. Yeah.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay. I'll definitely have that checked. Sometimes, you know, I'm just guessing It's possible that they're using maybe a different type of audio codec or something that we haven't yet updated to. So that is really good to know. Thank you.

Speaker 4
And another question. I noticed when you're browsing a bookshelf, like the audiobooks folder and say you put a book series in there, It doesn't, it just counts the book as a book and not the series as a series. Like if you put it in a victory reader, you'd notice a different layout.

Venkatesh Chari
So yeah, I think we had heard a little bit about I think something similar. I know what you mean. So you would like it to be to be, so if there's a series with 10 volumes, you want it to be counted as just one.

Speaker 4
Yeah, it's one, yeah.

Venkatesh Chari
Got it. Yeah. That's wonderful feedback. Thank you, Mitchell.

Speaker 4
All right, thanks.

Venkatesh Chari
Thank you, Mitchell. Yeah, we try to, we have a good running list and we are working hard actually now that by and large many things are a lot more stable. We are trying to work on some of these types of minor but still important issues. So thanks for bringing these to our attention.

Speaker 4
Welcome. Hey Robert, can you go ahead and hit the unmute my phone?

Robert Carter
I did.

Speaker 4
Thanks.

Robert Carter
Well, I actually I can't. Well, I could if you need me to, but I lowered your hand is actually what I did.

Speaker 4
Yeah, mute my phone so you guys don't hear my screen.

Robert Carter
Can you, thank you, Venkatesh. Rebecca, please unmute yourself and go ahead when you're ready.

Speaker 5
Can you hear me?

Robert Carter
Yes, you're good.

Speaker 5
Okay. I had two questions related to Kindle. The first one is, I've heard that Amazon is just continuing its current Kindle line and they're switching to some kind of more Android-based? Have you heard about this and what's the support for, say, the Orbit readers on that?

Venkatesh Chari
Yeah, that's a great question, Rebecca. I can only tell you what I have heard and part of that may not necessarily be accurate. I have heard that in terms of devices, they're switching to Actually, what I've heard is that instead of Fire OS tablets, they're switching to more of a pure Android-based tablet system. In fact, I think they have just announced a series of new tablets. But as far as I'm aware, in terms of the Kindle Book service, I don't believe there is any impact to that. So if you're reading it on your phone or through Alexa on the Orbit player, at least I'm not aware of any impact to those kinds of use cases. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your question, Rebecca. Is it making sense what I'm saying?

Speaker 5
It makes sense, but what I'm wondering is if there's going to be support for these new tablets, or maybe there already is, maybe They're just going to use tablets that are off the shelf. I'm not sure because I don't have it. I still have the old Amazon Kindle. I don't know how long they're going to support it. And the Orbit Reader works really great with both the iPhone and the Amazon Kindle tablets. And sometimes, you know, you get interrupted by the iPhone and that's why I try to switch to the tablet.

Venkatesh Chari
Right, I mean, as far as I know, if you're currently using that, I mean, I don't think that support will go away. Now, they may, I mean, like with most platforms, it's possible that in terms of updates to the software, et cetera, for the older platforms, that may stop at some point. But again, I'm really not qualified or it would not also be proper for me to guess what their strategy would be. I mean, I know that Amazon is very, very committed to accessibility and our orbit reader products were the first ones that they supported with their screen reader and we continued to work very closely with them. When we see, all the signs of continued support. So I think it's good to good to watch and I think it's a question to ask ask Amazon. I think it'd be really good to know actually.

Speaker 5
Okay, so basically You can't tell me whether or not they maybe come to you and said, Okay, we've got these new tablets, or you know that the my only concern is if someone tries to buy them and they have an Orbit reader, would it likely work? I guess, and that would be any Amazon question.

Venkatesh Chari
Yeah, that Amazon question. What I can tell you is that if let's say they were to switch to a more to Android, let's say, hypothetically, I don't know exactly what the situation, but if they were to switch to Android, then TalkBack would work on Android. And TalkBack supports the Orbitrator devices. And there are lots and lots of Android phones today that use our devices connected over Bluetooth or USB. So I don't think just switching to Android will cause any issue, because Android is fully supporting our products.

Speaker 5
Right. Okay, that was a main issue. The only question I had is, I know you can use the Alexa and Kindle on the play orbit player. What I'm wondering is, would there be any chance of being able to actually load the Kindle app onto the player and then, read by word, sentence, character, kind of what you can do in the, I guess, in, with the braille books and other formats? I don't have an orbit player yet, but I was curious if that's something people could do.

Venkatesh Chari
Right, that's a great question. So The Kindle app, and I totally understand what you mean, and having that natively available just like the Alexa app or Bard would be pretty nice. It is something that we are exploring. Again, there's always a lot of complexities that are unexpected. So we do hope to have that as well as other apps. available. I hope there is no major issues there. So as long as the experience is reasonably smooth and user-friendly, we would like to offer it. The main issue is how accessible the Android version of a particular app is. So if the Kindle app is quite friendly and TalkBack works well, then we can be pretty fairly confident that our screen reader will also work well. So there are those kinds of factors that we try to test as much as we can before saying that, okay, you know, this is now available. It's hard to kind of guarantee anything because a lot of times these apps also change, right? It's authored by someone else, it's owned by someone else, and for their own good reasons, they change them. And then all of a sudden we might find that, okay, it no longer really works the same way on our devices. So those are unfortunately risks that we can't really do anything about. So we just want our users to be aware of that and I think we should definitely use it while it works and we hope that it continues to work. For certain types of apps, we do wish and we are working on making native versions as well. It takes a lot more effort and time So they will come, but more slowly. So in the interim, we are really happy that at least we are able to start providing the standard Android apps, albeit with a screen reader interfacing to it. But at least the functionality starts becoming available.

Speaker 5
Okay. And one last question. Would it be possible to be able to link the Orbit Reader with the Orbit Player? What I mean by that is say someone's learning Braille and if they had an Orbit Reader, you know, with the subsidy program and then they had maybe an Orbit Player, would it be possible to link them maybe Bluetooth or something so that what they're hearing on Orbit Player could be synced with the Orbit Reader?

Venkatesh Chari
Right. so that is something that we have considered and it is something that we do plan to provide. It has certain technical complexities because it needs to know how to synchronize the speech and the Braille and how to update one versus the other. if you're reading it in Braille, you probably want to be able to scroll and pan from the Braille device's keyboard, right? So there are some complexities, but we know it's a very useful feature. So it's something that we are definitely looking into.

Speaker 5
Okay, well, thank you for answering my questions. I'm eager to see how this player goes on because you've already added a lot of great things in a short amount of time. So thanks.

Robert Carter
Thanks, Rebecca.

Venkatesh Chari
Thank you, Rebecca.

Robert Carter
Pat, please unmute and go ahead.

Speaker 6
Hi, I, there we go, I lowered my hand. I have two questions. One is the orbit 20 and the other is concerning the orbit flow. The orbit 20 plus It is paired to my Pixel 7A, which is an Android. phone, but it doesn't automatically come on for another for example, it may say connecting, but it doesn't connect, so I have to figure out how to connect it. But like I say, and then there are times when it says saved available. And it just doesn't when I double tap on that, it doesn't pop, it doesn't connect. Give me the connect sound. I wondered if you knew what I could do.

Venkatesh Chari
That's very interesting. Has it worked in the past or it has never worked?

Speaker 6
No, it has worked in the past. I've tried to call the tech part of Orbit Research, and unfortunately, I'm not able to understand what the tech people are saying. I've been through two tech people with this, and I can understand your English, but I can't understand theirs kind of thing. I apologize for that, but I'm just trying to get an answer to this.

Venkatesh Chari
Right. Let me do this. I mean, there's no real reason why it shouldn't work. I mean, the Pixel is certainly a very, very nice phone. And so I would expect it to work. There might be some sort of a configuration issue. And because even Google themselves use our devices internally for various kinds of things. So it is definitely a little surprising. Let me connect with our technical support folks and see what they had found. And we'll definitely get you in touch with someone that can speak with you and try to diagnose this and troubleshoot it further. Were you given any kind of ticket number or issue number?

Speaker 6
No, I was not. No.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay.

Speaker 6
No.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay. All right. How long back was this that you contacted them?

Speaker 6
Maybe a month kind of thing, but I contacted them, you know, on and off kind of thing. So.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay.

Speaker 6
Yeah.

Venkatesh Chari
So the, but and how long have you been trying to get this to work?

Speaker 6
I've been using it for a long time and it was working and that kind of thing. I guess about maybe the last two months or something like that. But it's the Orbit 20 Plus is what I'm using.

Venkatesh Chari
Right, Yeah, so it was working for a long time, but two months ago it started showing this issue.

Speaker 6
About that, about that, yeah.

Venkatesh Chari
I see, I see.

Speaker 6
And when I go into the pixel, when I, when I Connect it via the TalkBack menu it doesn't immediately I have to shut off my phone and then turn it on again, and sometimes that will help, but sometimes not, right?

Venkatesh Chari
So that behavior is actually a known sort of behavioral aspect of phones. So I'm not sure if that actually addresses your full and overall problem. But one thing with all of our devices, and I believe many other Braille devices as well, is that you need to have the Braille device on 1st or woken up 1st and then unlock the phone. Right. And then it's because when you unlock the phone, it immediately does a search for all the previously connected devices, Bluetooth devices. And then it'll right away find, you know, if the orbit reader is on, it'll find it and it'll reestablish the connection. If you do it in the opposite sequence, the phone doesn't know that a new device has turned on. So it will not do anything, it'll not connect, and then I think whatever, 5 minutes later, 10 minutes later, it kind of does a periodic search, and then it'll find it and reconnect. But that timing may vary from device to device, so the safest way is to go in the sequence where you turn the... arbitrator on, then unlock your phone, and then it should connect right away. So are you saying that even with that sequence, it doesn't work?

Speaker 6
No, that's what I do. That's the sequence I use.

Venkatesh Chari
I see. I see. Okay, so then something is going on there. So with that sequence, it should connect. So you're not even able to get to a connection. Okay, let's do this. Let me get some more details and we'll get back in touch with you. If you wouldn't mind, Pat, if you wouldn't mind just dropping a one-line e-mail with your phone number to tech support at Orbit, that'd be great.

Speaker 6
Okay. That doesn't go on the list when I do that, right? And the other question I have is about the flow. I'm wondering if you do any kind of lending of a device, because I'm interested in the flow, but I've never seen it. And I wondered if you do any kind of lending of a device for a couple of weeks and then we can return it or buy it, you know, whichever.

Venkatesh Chari
Right. That's a very good question. We haven't really thought about it yet. So far we haven't had such a program for our devices, mainly because they're kind of expensive and fragile.

Speaker 6
Well, yeah, that's the thing.

Venkatesh Chari
Right. But I do, I do, and I appreciate you know what you're what you're saying. Let me see what we can do. If you wouldn't mind, you know, Just also including that in your e-mail. We'll see what we can work out.

Speaker 6
Okay. Thank you.

Robert Carter
All right. Thank you, Pat. Brandon, please unmute and go ahead.

Speaker 7
Can you guys hear me okay?

Robert Carter
Yes, sir.

Speaker 7
Got a thing that might solve Bobby's issue eventually. Since you guys are testing out the Strata 20 Pro and 40 Pro, or maybe it's a 40 and that's based off of 14. And he plans on turning off the display and giving it the orbit speak like experience. That way you can see what it'd be like running it through sort of an orbit speak. You know what I mean?

Venkatesh Chari
Sorry, Brandon, you mean on a Strata Pro, turning off the Braille and just using it?

Speaker 7
Yeah, that way you could see what it would be like if an OrbitSpeak ran the same software for testing voices, obviously. That would solve the issue for Bobby. And since Google's running this stuff internally, maybe you could see about testing this stuff for an eventual OrbitSpeak release, if possible. And any updates on text-to-speech voices you could talk about lately? Because I know you were talking about ReadSpeaker. back in August or September eventually coming. So thought I would ask.

Venkatesh Chari
Right. So the voices are available. We are just in the process of working out the details of the fulfillment mechanism, you know, how do people access them, you know, so, and we wanted to make it smooth for everybody. So it's kind of automated. You can do it directly through our website. So we're currently in that process. So it is imminent. I know you've been asking about it, Brandon, and we have been saying that it is imminent, but I'm quite hopeful that in November this will happen.

Robert Carter
Anything else, Brandon? All right, sounds like.

Speaker 7
Yeah, I'm back. Will this all be through the app catalog once it's available? Since that's the way people get the stuff on the Orbit Speak in the Orbit Player now.

Venkatesh Chari
Yeah, it will be through a mechanism, not exactly sure if it is through the app catalog or through one of the settings, speech setting screens that's not finalized yet. But there's also sort of the other commercial part, right, for voices where And there is a cost to it. There's a mechanism on our website that has to take the order, enable it for a particular unit by serial number and things like that. So that's what we're in the process of working out.

Speaker 7
Also, I know that there was another app on the catalog, some of you were connecting your phone to the Orbit speaker or whatever, trying to figure out what the name of that is, but I thought I saw another app pre-installed when it came to the update. Recently.

Venkatesh Chari
On the, so there is an app that lets you use the Orbit Speak as a keypad for your phone. Is that what you're referring to?

Speaker 7
Yeah, I noticed it was never discussed on the list or anything, so I kind of found that surprising to see this mystery app pre-installed as part of the update.

Venkatesh Chari
Oh, no, actually the If you're talking about the same thing, the Keypad app was released quite a while back. I would suspect close to a year now. Yeah. Maybe we reorganized the menu or something so it popped up in a different place. But no, that's been available for quite a while.

Speaker 7
Maybe. I'll get the Orbit Speak and let you know what the name of the app is because I don't have the name on hand right now.

Venkatesh Chari
Sure.

Speaker 7
But I'll get it real quick.

Venkatesh Chari
Sure. And, by the way, we will have the library is also coming online with this new reader app, and Brent, I know you've been having some challenges with Newsline, so we do that'll be one of the first ones that we actually bring on online with the new reader app. We'd love for you to to try it out and tell us what you think about it.

Robert Carter
All right. Well, thank you, Brandon. Ken, please unmute yourself and go ahead when you're ready.

Speaker 8
Okay, so the app that previous person was talking about is Visor. And you can connect, it's like you connect it to a screen or something so you can view. What's on it? I've looked at the app. I'm just like, it's like it treats it like a phone. And also another thing. So there's this, I guess this other app called Alphonic Edit, like some kind of recorder slash editor that you guys somehow put on there. I was able to browse Chrome on that. I was able to get to the, like, there's a thing that's like sign in or register an account. I was able to go into the Chrome browser with the exception of no web browsing commands, I was able to navigate that fine. So maybe you can make Chrome the browser on the orbit speak at some point when you get web navigation to work.

Venkatesh Chari
Yeah. So it's one of the things that we It's one among the list of apps that we would think about side loading and making available on an as-is basis. A browser is sort of significantly more complex and potentially can cause a lot more compatibility issues and so on. So it's certainly something that we will look at. I think a lot of our audience already has sort of phones and computers that they typically use a browser on. And it's a, if you take a device like the Orbit Player and you're trying to fill out a form on a web page, it's not exactly the best experience because just of the keypad. So at some point, yeah, we will if it makes sense to, if it can be an acceptable experience. I mean, we would love to offer as many features as we can. We're just trying to balance sort of usefulness with the amount of testing that we would want to do. And then, even though we keep emphasizing that these third-party apps are not supported, we know that people if they have struggles, they will still look to us for support and, we want to be able to, not let them down. So we're trying to balance these things.

Speaker 8
Right. Another thing I want to say is I did try that third party satellite launcher that someone made for the orbit speak. I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say this. To those that are on here, install it at your own risk because It may not have broken anything on my unit, but I'm just going to say this here. If you use any of the third-party apps on the app catalog, the backtalk screen reader will work on those apps instead of the built-in screen reader that you guys have, that you guys have on the open speed by default. So it's when you guys know that I uninstalled it since I tried it, but other than that, I'm just like, I don't want to be a rule breaker. So I tried it for a little bit and was like, yeah, I'm going to go back to the default. So.

Venkatesh Chari
Right, right. Thanks for sharing that, Ken. our take on this is very simple. I mean, the device is there, when you buy it, you own it, it's yours to do what you like. There's only so much we can do to support if, there are third parties that can enhance it. That's great. But at the same time, I think, that people should be aware of the risks. And in some cases, there may be no going back, right? Things may get altered permanently. I mean, this is kind of well known with some of the devices like iOS devices, right? Yes. So, you know, we are open-minded about this. And, you know, I think some of the announcements that came through were we're actually very clear in terms of identifying the risks. And so I think that's great. We strongly support creativity and exploration and all of that. But if you know what you're doing, then I think some of those risks are very manageable because you will then know how to revert and go back and fix things or whatever. The our recommendation is to stay with what we have, what we offer. Please do give us feedback so that we can try to enhance those offerings as much as we can.

Speaker 8
Right. The launcher was Reversible, obviously. There was a way to reverse it, so I'm glad I was able to do that.

Robert Carter
All right, we will need to move on here. Thank you much. Dwayne, please unmute and go ahead when you're ready. Not hearing you, Dwayne. Are you there?

Venkatesh Chari
I think the microphone is still muted. It shows. Dwayne, you might want to unmute.

Robert Carter
I think we got you now. Go ahead. Maybe not.

Venkatesh Chari
I think it's still muted, I think.

Robert Carter
Okay. All right. phone number 141966. If you would like to go ahead and unmute and go ahead, please go ahead.

Speaker 9
I hope I'm unmuted. This is Colleen Roth. Thank you. Colleen Roth from Ohio. I don't do a lot of e-mail. I just got the blind child three, so learning. I used to use the Polaris and before that, the BrailleSense Plus. One of the things that's happened is I've had to have a lot of updates done and I had to have someone take my orbit speak to their house and connect with someone in India and then we still had problems and did figure out that we had to change the do the core G to change it so that it wouldn't be contracted Braille, even though in the Braille settings I had a dot US computer Braille. But my question is, I apologize, I know that some of you would like to, are going to want to say a couple things about my abilities and technology, and I've read the But my question is, I have a folder which is called Amateur, and they have a lot of folders in there for different nets that I did. For some reason, after the last update, I think they changed the way they want you to save files, and I only put the name of the file in one spot. I think it must go in two spots. save and then you put the name of the file and you leave the TXC because that's what I wanted and I went then you can't put anything until you choose. whether you want internal or SD, and I want an SD, and then you have to write the name of the file again. At least that's what I'm thinking it is. But for some reason, all of these files that I were using every night for amateur radio things, they ended up making another file, and it wasn't in the amateur folder. Along with the list of other files, it was listed, these files, and then every night it would create a new one. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? And I apologize because I know some of you are probably thinking I shouldn't, but I'm not good at doing e-mail and I'm not good at getting technical support. They get annoyed when you call.

Venkatesh Chari
Well, Colleen, thanks for sharing that. I am not qualified to to fully answer that in terms of the specifics. But there might be folks on the call who might be able to help. But we can definitely get you support on this, put you in touch with someone who can fully understand if there is a sort of language or communication issue. I'm sure we can find a good way to help you.

Speaker 9
It is language, and it sounds like he doesn't like it when you talk on the phone and you don't want to do e-mail. I wouldn't have purchased this if I knew I wasn't going to get support on the phone. And so it's just they keep changing the way you save things on the orbit. and I had someone take it home and they were up a couple hours talking to someone in the middle of the night in India. And I feel like we should have technical support, even if we have to pay for it, if someone will talk to us on the phone and not demand e-mail. Thanks.

Venkatesh Chari
No, absolutely, absolutely. And we do have technical support that works in our time zone. When you spoke with someone in India, it was very likely someone from the development.

Speaker 9
They were from India. They were from India. And I didn't speak to them. The person I have to help me do things is the one that did it.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay, okay. Well, let me, Colleen, you mentioned your last name is Roth.

Speaker 9
Roth, R-O-T-H. And I will give you my phone number. I could care less if people have it since I can't do an e-mail to you. 419-661-9171. And it's Colleen Roth, R-O-T-H. And I would even be willing to pay someone that they would help me on the phone. My husband just tells me I'm stupid when I have difficulty with these things. So yeah. If somebody feels like being nice to me and not yelling at me, thank you.

Venkatesh Chari
And I'll definitely look into this. Colleen, I know you should not have to pay for support. That's our duty. and would be happy to provide whatever support is required. So let me look into this. And thanks. Yeah, we'll definitely get back to you.

Speaker 9
Thank you.

Robert Carter
All right. Anthony, please unmute and go ahead.

Speaker 10
Hello, everybody. Venkatesh, a few things. I've been having a few problems with Braille translation. I went into the editor and.

Venkatesh Chari
This is on the Orbit speak.

Speaker 10
Yes, and I typed in and I typed in now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party just as a test. And I've got it set to echo words and what it was doing, it was going N and then W and T&E for this. and T&E for time. And I sort of emailed support and Adi got back to me and he said, I've noticed it's doing this. And I've had sort of other problems with things like the sleep timer, not honoring the setting that says when playing, don't go to sleep. and a couple of other things. And you just and I sort of find it interesting that these things aren't being picked up by in the beta stage. So yeah, the other one is Explorer keeps defaulting everywhere to the internal storage rather than remembering where you were. And you just think these are sort of quite sort of big bugs. And they don't seem to be being picked up.

Venkatesh Chari
That's very interesting. Could you tell me, Anthony, which version of the software you're on?

Speaker 10
The latest one?

Venkatesh Chari
Latest one.

Speaker 10
I don't know whether it's got something to do with I'm set to UK Braille and things like that.

Venkatesh Chari
Right. since you have been emailing, let me connect with the team and try to figure out what's going on. I mean, to answer your question about why some of these things are not getting picked up in beta, we too wish they would get picked up early because a lot of these are actually fairly simple to fix. So we do fairly extensive testing internally, but devices like this and there are so many use cases and scenarios that it's really hard to cover everything thoroughly. And the state of the unit, even for instance, they are example of perhaps loading a UK table, everything could potentially make a difference in the behavior. So while we do try and we have a very supportive beta group. There are many, many, many instances where these are not unfortunately picked up early enough. Are you part of the beta group for our?

Speaker 10
No, I have asked, but it never seems to happen.

Venkatesh Chari
Oh, okay. I will take this as an action right now and we'll make it happen. One second. So as far as the the Braille translation issue. So you were using UK Braille, you said?

Speaker 10
Yes, I was using UK contracted.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay, And when Adi responded, did he have an answer for you or did he just say?

Speaker 10
Well, he just said, I've noticed it's doing this.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay, All right. Sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 10
Yeah, he just said, I've noticed it's doing this and I'm sort of thinking about it.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay. Do you recall how long back this was?

Speaker 10
A few weeks. Okay. It was I sort of reported it the day after it came out, the last version of the software.

Venkatesh Chari
Fifty.3. Okay. All right. So let me check on that. It's so I mean, as you probably know, we for Braille translation, we use the libraries and the table, the translation tables. And we pretty much use them as is. Now, of course, it is possible that there is some interaction with our software the way it is, it is, it is using those tables. So it could certainly be an issue on our side. Have you had a chance to use the same tables on Any other device like maybe with NVDA or somewhere else?

Speaker 10
I haven't noticed it doing sort of, I know JAWS and one or two other things use the Bluey and I haven't noticed it doing it on those.

Venkatesh Chari
You have not? Okay.

Speaker 10
No.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay. So then it might be something on our side or maybe for some reason if it is an older table that is Mistakenly come in. All right. This is very helpful, Anthony. Thanks for sharing this.

Speaker 10
Yes. And can I ask a question about entering passwords? Yeah. Why can't we enter them in UEB? Because I sort of, you know, all the characters are available in UEB and I would have thought computer brain is something that over time is going to be phased out, especially if you're a child or whatever, I would have thought it would make sense to be able to enter them in UEB.

Venkatesh Chari
So you mean uncontracted UEB?

Speaker 10
Well, I mean, it doesn't matter if there's translation, does it? Right, But yeah.

Venkatesh Chari
That's a great question. I believe when we first looked into this, there were reasons why we had to use computer braille or allow computer braille only. I think there were some challenges. I don't recall exactly, but that's a very good question. And certainly if we can allow it, I mean, this is actually sort of a restriction that we're imposing. And if you don't have to, I mean, we can.

Speaker 10
Maybe James at the RIP's got some thoughts, James Bowden.

Venkatesh Chari
Right. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I'll definitely check with James. He's often on the line, but I don't see him today. I'll complain to him that he was not there when he was needed.

Speaker 10
Okay. All right. Cheers, Vamshtesh.

Robert Carter
Thank you, Anthony.

Venkatesh Chari
Thank you, Anthony.

Robert Carter
I'm going to need to, I think, bring this to a close. And because we're running a little bit over and I appreciate everybody being here. It's been a good meeting. I'm glad to hear people bringing up things that you're trying to get worked out. And thank you, Venkatesh, for responding to people's issues and requests. And this is what I love about this meeting. There is a dialogue that takes place. So I'm really happy about that. But we will be back sometime in November. We'll have to work that out, Venkatesh. I'm not quite sure. I'm going to be traveling near the end of the month, but we'll figure something out.

Venkatesh Chari
We will, we will. Thank you very much, Robert, for organizing this, for hosting this, and thanks everyone for joining. Great conversation. Thanks so much for all the feedback and suggestions.

Robert Carter
Yep, thank you everybody. See you next month. So long for now.
