﻿OrbitResearchSeptember2026ZoomMeeting.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 everyone, welcome to the September edition of the Orbit Research Monthly Meeting. I always enjoy doing these meetings, but today was a little rough with a technical problem at the beginning, but we're squared away now and we're ready to go. And I suspect there is someone else who is ready to go, so Venkatesh, if you would please Unmute yourself when you're ready, sir, and give us an update on what's happening at Orbit Research this month.

Venkatesh Chari
Thanks, Robert. As the conversation has been going, technical difficulties are part of technology, I guess, something that is always a good reminder of everything that we take for granted. So In terms of updates, as always, there's been a lot of activity going on. There are releases that have happened in September on our Braille products. We had a couple of releases. None were critical. They had more to do with libluey language support for certain languages. We have some upcoming releases as well in October. Again, these will not be critical, so be on the lookout, but at least take a look at the release notes. There are certain bug fixes and language-based issues again, which will likely not affect everyone. We also have a release that's due to come out in a couple of days on our QWERTY 20 and QWERTY 40 models. This will introduce an additional language profile and makes it easier to switch between languages and have an additional language available on the device for easy and rapid switching. We also have an update planned in the next week or so for the Graffiti Plus. This adds a lot of different functions that we've been developing related to drawing, general UI improvements, addition of some features for supporting the TI-84. So lots of nice enhancements. We have a release also planned in November for the graffiti. This also adds some very nice touch related features. We have the ability to use touch in HDMI mode to move your cursor on a connected computer device, which opens up a lot of different capabilities. So some exciting features coming on the Graffiti and Graffiti Plus products also. On the Olympus related platforms, products rather, so Olympus is kind of an internal name for our Android platform, Android-based platform rather, which is what we use on the Orbit Player and the Orbit Speak and Orbit Speak Plus. There's been a lot of activity as you might expect. We had release 2.3 go out last month as planned. It seems to have been largely stable. There was a hotfix that we released about a day after launch. And since then it seems to have been relatively good and stable. I'd love to hear from you folks. If you've had challenges, we have released 2.4 for both Orbit Speak and Orbit Player, also planned in the second week of October. Most likely we'll have a beta out this week for beta tasters, not a public beta. This will include a redone book reader application with lots of improvements, a redesigned interface which supports a more file browser-like starting point without needing to have a library or a bookshelf or a book on a library or a bookshelf, a better reading experience with proper cursor navigation, folks have observed and complained for a while, things such as character by character navigation, going to the beginning or the end, improved search, things that are fairly fundamental but which we had not been able to offer due to various limitations with the platform that we were using. So we have now redone a lot of things to make these and other capabilities also possible in the future. There'll also be a better experience when navigating by elements such as headings, tables, lists, et cetera. We've also significantly improved the file loading speed. You'll find that in many cases it's now twice as fast as before. We also added support for additional file formats such as PowerPoint files as well as legacy Word, Microsoft Word, Doc files, OpenOffice documents, Mobi files, and FB2 as well. We also have support for synchronized Daisy text and audio playback. And there are two ways of reading text, either using our built-in native screen reader or with the independent text-to-speech playback. These are two slightly different experiences and available on many products. And people have different preferences, so we're offering both. We're also working on improving support for more libraries in the new Book Reader to provide a more stable experience for Bookshare and have been Newsline library supported by supported using DODP. The first release next month will have Newsline and the DODP libraries such as the Vision Australia Library as well as the Indian Library and So, and more will come. We know there have been challenges with experiences with certain libraries, including NSB Newsline, so we have worked very hard to address those in this new version of the reader. Also, we will be able to support audio and DAISY books without having them stored as zip files. Currently, they need to be in a zip format, so we'll support both. Also, people have been asking us about synthesizers. So we will have ReadSpeaker available as the first new TTS synthesizer. It'll be available sometime in October. This will be a paid voice. So at this time, it's most likely going to be priced at $29.95. People will be able to purchase a license for it, and then automatically it'll be available to them to download and install. We do have some other surprises. planned in October. I want to leave them as surprises for the moment. Other news, we launched the OrbitFlow last month and it has had a wonderful reception. Folks have reported really enjoying using it. So we would Love to hear more about people's experiences with the device. We also launched the chatbot, the orbot. We see people are gradually starting to use it. We hope people will use it more. frequently as needed. The whole purpose is to provide quick answers to simpler questions. And of course, our support team remains available at all times through e-mail and phone. We continue to work on the Strata family, which are on schedule for launch later this year. The Strata 40 will be released first, followed by the Strata 40 Pro and then the Strata 20 Pro. So those are the updates from Orbit. Robert, I'll hand the microphone back to you.

Robert Carter
Sounds great. A lot of stuff as always. Thanks for the update. Mitchell, you have your hand raised. Please unmute and go ahead with your question or comment.

Speaker 3
I noticed you can't go backwards in book folders or music folders. And another thing, with a Victor Reader, when you put book series in the other bookshelf, it shows each book as an individual book. With the orbit, it just shows the series as one folder. Any idea on improving that?

Venkatesh Chari
That's great feedback. Yeah. So we will have the ability to do a lot of these things now with this newly developed book reader app. So this is very good feedback. I've made a note of it and we'll definitely see how we can improve these.

Speaker 3
Okay. I don't use the book reader. I use the audiobooks folder on the SD card itself. Yeah.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay. All right.

Speaker 3
Thanks for making this.

Venkatesh Chari
Sure.

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

Speaker 4
These 2 items were kind of related in terms of how I discovered them. So to make a note, both of these are not happening on my Orbit Peak Plus, so it's just the player with the latest version. So first, and I suspect this was an issue, continued issue with the server, but when initially after I had downloaded the update, even when it was in sleep mode, I was getting communication error messages So that might just be worth checking on both products, just that when it is in sleep mode, that really it is quiet. But that worked out in a way that happened because I had to turn it off to get that to completely stop. And when I restarted it. And again, this didn't happen with the Speak Plus, just with the player. I noticed that my speech speed setting seemed to have reset itself back to the default. So I'll try this restarting again to see if it happens, but preliminarily, perhaps I just wanted to make note of that issue when you're going through with Beijing and such with the next version, if you could perhaps just, if you all could perhaps just check into that kindly to see if that setting is perhaps not being It's strange because it's being retained. It is like there now, but it seems that when I restarted it, was not. So that is it. Thank you so much.

Venkatesh Chari
Thank you, Maria. That is very interesting. How recent was this? Was this when you updated it to 2.3? Yeah. Okay. Okay, we'll definitely look into that, because as far as the communication error messages, that was something that we had addressed, and so it's a little bit surprising that you're still getting it. might, and now, after.

Speaker 4
So I'm not I'm not getting it this moment, so that's why I suspect it had to do with the server, but I was surprised that I was still getting them when it was in sleep mode, because I would have thought that it wouldn't have said anything right when it was in sleep mode. That was the part that was like surprising to me, like, why is it still...

Venkatesh Chari
Right, Very interesting. Thanks for reporting that, Maria. We'll definitely look into that. The speech getting reset, that sounds somewhat like a bug. After you installed the update, did you once power cycle the unit or did you just continue using it?

Speaker 4
I continued using it for a bit, but then when this communication error, when I kept hearing that message, I needed to turn it off so that it wasn't like disrupting when it was still in sleep mode. So then I did power cycle it, and then that was when I had experienced it. So I can power cycle it again. I've kind of just been putting it in sleep mode. I hadn't tried power cycling again. I certainly can try doing that.

Venkatesh Chari
Yeah, that'll be good, actually, just to know if it kind of resets again, or was it only a one-time thing? For sure, various things, various very different things happen when we do an update, and while the objective is to not require a restart again, sometimes It's possible there's a bug that has left some residual settings changed or unchanged. So thanks for reporting, Maria. We'll definitely look into it right away.

Speaker 4
Sure. Thank you. And I can follow up if anything's changed. I'll power cycle it again. I can even do that now. And I can follow up to see if it happens again. So thanks.

Venkatesh Chari
Thank you.

Robert Carter
Thank you, Maria. Brandon, you're up. Please go ahead when you're ready.

Speaker 5
Okay. Can you guys hear me okay?

Robert Carter
Yes, sir. You're good.

Speaker 5
Any plans on clearing up the confusion with the Runa TTS? And the only reason why I'm asking is localizer is Runa TTS on the Orbit products. There's a Runa TTS for iOS, but it's ReadSpeaker. In our words, what's the real Runa TTS?

Venkatesh Chari
So, Runa TTS is sort of the brand name for our TTS products. It is utilized on the Orbit Player and the Orbit Speak, and we also make it available as a stand-alone product for both Windows, where you can... purchase it with vocalizer, voices, as well as ReadSpeaker. And at some point we will also make it available for iOS. Currently it is in test. So it's a, that's a great question, man. I mean, so yeah, to clarify, that's the family of TTS products. And while currently we have a couple of synthesizers available, we will have more available in the future. Yeah, but on our, sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead.

Speaker 5
Yeah, but how are you going to be able to tell them apart? Because when somebody says Runa TTS, they're either going to be talking about the vocalizer and the Orbit products or ReadSpeaker and iOS. That's what I mean. How are you going to be able to tell them apart considering they're all Runa TTS in name?

Venkatesh Chari
It will, you'll tell them apart by platform, right? So, if someone reports, let's say, an issue or wants a feature, it will, we'll ask them what platform they are on. So, it's just like, for instance, Vocalizer is available on multiple platforms, right? Multiple products, multiple platforms, multiple operating systems. So, it's a similar, very simple concept that we are trying to to launch, but clearly we probably need to be clear in our messaging.

Speaker 5
Okay. I mean, I could tell the difference, but I know how a new user would be like, which one are you talking about?

Venkatesh Chari
Yes, I think we should work on the messaging a little bit more.

Robert Carter
Anything else, Brandon?

Speaker 5
Not right now. If I come up with anything, I'll let you know.

Robert Carter
All right, sounds good. Thank you, sir. Charles, please unmute and go ahead.

Speaker 6
Hey, everybody. This is not a complaint or feedback of any kind. Well, it's positive feedback. I've gotten to spend some time with the new Orbit Flow and I really, really like it. I just wanted to let you guys know and take the opportunity to say, good job. Love the simple, intuitive design and the simple, intuitive use. And I hope it becomes a very successful product for you guys because it's pretty awesome.

Venkatesh Chari
Thank you. Thank you very much, Charles. Really appreciate that. The intent was exactly to provide something that's very simple, intuitive, easy to use. I'm really glad to hear that. It's working that way for you. Please do let us know if you find any issues or you have suggestions for improvement. It is still early days. As we know, there's Murphy's law of suffering. There's always one more bug.

Speaker 6
Yeah, everybody on the NFB Accessibility Excellence Team has taken the Orbit Flow for a spin, and we all have come away within like 15 minutes of being like, Wow, we really needed this device in a day and age where Braille displays and note-takers are. simultaneously becoming Windows 11 PCs and having all of these extra functionalities and stuff. It's nice to have a display that you just, literally it's just plug and play. So it's been really nice. I did notice that some of the scroll buttons seem a little reverse when you plug it into a Mac, specifically with Mac voiceover, but it's definitely not a deal breaker because you can go in and re-map those keys. So the functionality, the display, the experience has been really, really good.

Venkatesh Chari
Thank you. Thank you, Charles. I'll take a look and see about the mapping, the default mapping for the Mac and if there is anything we can do on our side. But yes, as you said, they are all remappable through the screen readers configuration itself. So it should be possible even if there's nothing we can do on our side. But I'll check out the default mappings.

Speaker 6
All right, great. Thanks.

Robert Carter
All right, thank you. Thank you, Charles. Ibrahim, please unmute and go ahead when you're ready.

Speaker 7
Yeah, this has been a great presentation. Two quick questions. Any chance in the future of supporting a Bookshare, human-narrated audiobooks, and also has Audible come to the device yet?

Venkatesh Chari
Yeah, great question. So I'm sorry, your question was about Bookshare, you mean?

Speaker 7
Bookshare human narrated audiobooks, if they're gonna come at all, the device, the reader.

Venkatesh Chari
I'm so sorry, Abraham. If you wouldn't mind telling me once again, so you mean bookshare?

Speaker 7
Bookshare human narrated audiobooks. I was wondering if that's gonna be supported at all on the reader, orbit reader.

Speaker 8
This Richard, could I dive in here?

Venkatesh Chari
Yeah.

Speaker 7
Is that better?

Speaker 8
They should just work. They're just, they're downloading, you're downloading an audio file that's in this DAISY audio format, I believe, or it's straight MP3. But either way, it's an audio format that should play. Have you tried downloading one that didn't work?

Speaker 7
I don't have a device. I'm just curious if that's.

Speaker 8
Oh, yeah, it should just work.

Speaker 4
If I can jump in, it's been a little while, so it might have changed more recently, but I had tried downloading some audio books. This is a subset Bookshare has, I forget what the amount is, but I had tried downloading these and I get what you're saying. In theory, it definitely should work because they're just Daisy audio and that is supported by the book reader. But there must be something different in how they're stored or some such because the last time I tried, and I can try it again, I did get an error message that said something like, Location cannot be found.

Speaker 7
OK, that's because I know on like other products stream, they only do the text. You have to go and actually like add them from a website or.

Speaker 4
Yeah, something had to be added. Yeah, I remember that even like with voice stream on iOS.

Speaker 7
I'm just wondering like if they're natively supported on the device, right?

Speaker 8
It should be. Now, they take, they're a lot larger and they take a long time to download from their servers. That's improved in the last couple of months. I can go find one and try downloading it.

Speaker 7
Okay.

Speaker 8
And send a note to the group and tech support. So.

Speaker 7
And is Audible supported or is that coming soon at all?

Venkatesh Chari
So Audible is not currently supported. It's something that we are exploring. It is a sort of a proprietary paid kind of service, as you know. And there are a lot of commercial aspects to it, as well as technical. So we are working on ways to do it. It's something that we recognize is a very desirable feature. So it's something that's definitely close to the top of our list of capabilities to provide. It's difficult to promise it at this time because, again, there are things that are out of our hands. It's a third-party provider. It has its own commercial aspects and so on. All I can say right now is it's something we're looking at very seriously, and hopefully we'll be able to make it happen.

Speaker 7
Okay, cool.

Venkatesh Chari
Thank you. And as far as Richard and Maria had said, the download and playback of audio format books from Bookshare and from other sources is definitely possible, and it is a... a feature that should work. And if there are instances where it's not properly working, we'll definitely take a close look and figure out what's going on. But that's intended to be supported right out-of-the-box.

Speaker 7
That's cool, because I've noticed a couple other players that just make you either listen to the text or go to the website and add them to like a wish list or something to feed the fight list. So that's good news. Thank you.

Robert Carter
All right, excellent. James, please unmute and go ahead, sir.

Speaker 9
Hello. I have a few little points. I'm hoping they're all fairly straightforward. First of all, Venkatesh, like Maria, I had a voice reset on the Orbit Speak Plus that I have here. I obviously, being a Brit, the UK voice and I changed to the Kate voice. And I then went into the time and date setting, clock settings, asked to check the time and it switched to Samantha US. Bizarre. It only happened once. If I do it now, it's absolutely fine. I think the clue might be the first time after an upgrade. Right. Which is exactly the same as what Maria said. So that might be a clue. Okay, that's the first thing. Second thing, have you thought about exceptions, they're called normally exceptions, to correct mispronunciations by speech synthesizers? Now, there's two aspects to this. One is a factory library, and I'll give you the classic example. In the help about box, they're all going to do it now. The help about box, the support e-mail address is beautifully announced as orbitrisark.com. So there's obviously, you know, Vocalizer doesn't know how to pronounce orbitrisark when it's all one word. and a factory supplied speech exception. And I suggest doing it through the vocalizer exceptions system because you can then do both text and phonetic replacements. In a previous life, used to work on speech exceptions quite a lot. And for the British voices, I think we got up to something like 8,000 exceptions. So there's clearly a wide range of words which are not pronounced correctly. And in this day and age, it really does astound me that no speech synth has got a decent lexicon. There you go. So the first part is factory supplied and the second part is user supplied. So if somebody has an unusual name or a place or they happen to come across an abbreviation very frequently and they want to fix that, they can. Most major screen readers do have an exceptions facility.

Venkatesh Chari
Right, Very, very good point, James. And absolutely, we have been thinking about and working on a system for exceptions for some time now. And as there are various things that kind of needed to get addressed first. So we're now glad release 2 is out there, release 2.3, and now with release 2.4, I think we'll have a very robust and user-friendly set of apps that kind of meet the original goal that we had of a very nice, intuitive, easy-to-use player that'll allow us to focus on these other facilities. So this is definitely also pretty high on that list of priorities, James, both the factory-supplied set of exceptions as well as the user-supplied one. We're also taking into account the fact that we do support even out-of-the-box multiple TTS engines.

Speaker 9
That is the challenge. That is the challenge because they have to be per voice. Certainly per language, per TTS, sometimes per voice as well.

Venkatesh Chari
Right. So we would certainly be coming to you soon, James, to maybe get some insights.

Speaker 9
I don't have the SDK anymore. I used to have the SDK to make vocalizer exceptions. And yes, it was a fun thing to do. So I will send some feedback about the internet radio separately. But my final question is, anybody from Orbit Research or from the team coming to the UK Site Village exhibition, October 27, 28.

Venkatesh Chari
So I really wish we were, but unfortunately we will not be able to come this year. We are trying to work out how some of our distributors can show our products. And we will hopefully be able to make a small announcement about that soon. I know it would be really nice, especially for the new products to be on display. But at the moment, we're not able to plan a trip ourselves.

Speaker 9
Thank you. That's great.

Venkatesh Chari
Thanks. Thanks, James.

Robert Carter
Thanks, James. We now have a phone number ending in 888. Please unmute and go ahead when you're ready.

Speaker 10
I do hope you can hear me and I send you all the warmest greetings. Are you hearing me?

Robert Carter
Hello, Mike. We got you. Go ahead.

Speaker 10
This is fantastic. Well, Venkatesh, it is virtually impossible for me to listen to your review without thinking with great wonderment. What a very long way we have come. since the introduction of Orbit Reader 20 and I congratulate you richly on being so productive. Thank you. I've got two basic questions for you. One is deeply sad, the other is probably optimistic. One that's deeply sad is that two of my Orbit Reader 20s Unfortunately, more than one occasion have deleted files. I've entered it, knowing full well that there is plenty in there. And suddenly there's FBA. Nothing at all. And I wonder if you can give me an explanation.

Venkatesh Chari
These are these running the current software, current version of firmware.

Speaker 10
Well, I don't know. I haven't, it hasn't been updated for some little time. I've lost faith in it a bit, really, to be honest. Because it becomes a matter of virtually saying a few prayers before you open the file. I don't know why it's happened with both my machines.

Venkatesh Chari
That is surprising. I mean, very long back, in the initial years after we introduced, there were sort of random instances where people did report files getting deleted. I must say that I haven't heard of a complaint like this. And so we found, we debugged and figured out what was happening. We fixed the issues. And I must say I haven't heard for quite some time someone complaining about this. There are I think there were a couple of incidents where sometimes it's the SD card itself that can misbehave, but it's been very rare over the last several years. So that's why I was asking when you had done the last software update. If you wouldn't mind, perhaps later dropping us an e-mail, the menu will show you what version you have, and then we can tell you if this problem potentially existed in that version.

Speaker 10
Right. Of the many other questions that I would dearly like to ask you, the second one relates to that which I take to be strata. Do I take it that strata will be a machine which will include, and this is what I want, both Braille and speech?

Venkatesh Chari
That is Mostly correct. So the Strata is a family of products. There are currently 3 models that we are working on. The first model called the Strata 40 is identical in functionality to the Orbit Reader 40. So it's a simpler device. It does have audio, but it's only for indication, so beeps and tones and alarms. It has the same simple apps and note-taking, file management, a simple calculator or calendar, and of course, connectivity to screen readers. So it's intended to be for someone who's probably mostly using it just for simple note-taking functions in meetings or classrooms and to connect to a computer or phone. The Strata 40 Pro model has all the capabilities that the Orbit Speed Plus offers, so including voice, TTS engines. So it's based on the same Android platform. So it offers all of the same features, internet radio, podcasts, voice recording, library access. and other apps that we continue to develop. So that will be, yes, it'll be full-featured. It's a fully multimodal device offering Braille and speech and the ability to switch back and forth between them or even have perhaps both available simultaneously. So yeah, the Strata 40 Pro model offers that, and the Strata 20 Pro has exactly the same features, except that it's 20 cells instead of 40. So yeah, they will both offer all of these capabilities.

Speaker 10
Tell me, is it available in a QWERTY version as well as a Braille?

Venkatesh Chari
So initially we are launching a Braille, a Perkins style version. And so from a form factor perspective, actually, Strata 40 and Strata 40 Pro are identical, but internally they have different platforms. In the future, yes, the equity model is certainly something that's on the roadmap.

Speaker 10
I've just bought the 40, which of course has no speech as such. And I'm rather disappointed to think that I don't really mind just working with the best, but I think when you, if you've got the possibility of having speech as well, it's a wonderful advantage.

Venkatesh Chari
Right, exactly, Yeah. So, you know, the whole sort of thought process behind the strata and flow families was to offer more options. You know, everyone has a a different use case. Some folks really like something that's very, very simple, like the flow. Some folks prefer the piezo cells. Some folks prefer our cells. And some folks want more functionality. So we're trying to, you know, obviously we can't cater to every possible combination, but we're trying to do as much as we can to offer what we feel are the more popular combinations. So this feedback is very helpful. It's good to know that, you know, you would prefer a QwerT product. And it's, as you can imagine, the big part is kind of developing the platform and then developing variants based on that platform is a little bit easier. So we hope that once this platform is ready, then creating those variants will be quicker.

Speaker 10
Oh, Robert doesn't mind me. Putting in an extra one. What is the latest on Optima?

Venkatesh Chari
Yes. So Optima is, so we have now also developed a version with Piezo cells. So we have a continuing development. We, as you know, we're going to offer both the Piezo as well as a version with our true braille cells. The development has been slower than we had expected. It's continuing though. It's something that we actively work on. We expect it to be available sometime next year. It's been mainly a question of how quickly we can develop what is a much more complex and expensive product to develop. with the resources that we have available. So we've been actually also working to see how we can get external help to, for development funding and things like that. So if folks have ideas about that, we'd love to hear them. But it's something that is very dear to us and that we continue to work on just at a somewhat slower pace than what we and our customers would like.

Speaker 10
The whole thing is fascinating and I thank you very much and I think about you all plentifully between meetings. Thank you ever so much.

Venkatesh Chari
Thank you, Michael.

Robert Carter
Thank you, Mike. It's good to have you back. It's been a while. Alexandra, you are up next. Please unmute and go ahead when you're ready.

Speaker 11
Hey everybody, a few months back I had a question on Unicode Braille on Orbit Reader 40, which I fortunately got answered and took it by e-mail and stuff like that. Now I wanted to ask fairly quickly, I think, if it is possible to actually have The text saved as Unicode Braille from the display. So if I understand correctly, if you save to BRF, you'll get ASCII characters. If you save to TXT, the display will actually translate your text from Braille into, you know, ordinary text. What about Unicode Braille? Is this a thing? Thank you.

Venkatesh Chari
So you would like the You would like a text file to be saved, to be converted to Unicode Braille and saved as Unicode Braille code instead of ASCII codes or Unicode equivalence of ASCII.

Speaker 11
Yeah, that's correct. Only if it's possible.

Venkatesh Chari
Okay. At the moment, we do not have that, but in terms of, is it possible? It is possible. The Orbit Reader family of products is, it's got a certain amount of memory and processing power. So for something like this, it's not really much processing power, but memory is a constraint. On the 40, I don't think there's an issue in making this possible. It's, of course, some development work, but it should be possible to do that.

Speaker 11
I see. Thank you so much.

Venkatesh Chari
Yeah, I'll certainly look into it. Now, if you save it as Unicode Braille, then what do you display it on? Do you again read it on a Braille device or elsewhere?

Speaker 11
Braille display as well as if you want to send an example to someone and you want to have it directly in Braille Unicode rather than asking them to put the ASCII characters on a specific font and stuff like that. For some reason, the Unicode characters are sort of more convenient. And yeah, that's why I thought I would ask about that if it's possible to do it on display. Very good question.

Venkatesh Chari
Yes, makes perfect sense. Thank you, Alexandra.

Robert Carter
Thank you very much. That's something that I know nothing about. Never even thought of it. Maybe I could learn something. Brandon, please unmute and go ahead.

Speaker 5
Okay, got a few questions that are somewhat related. I know I mentioned a while back about talking to people like Mike Calvo over at Numa Solutions about their platform being on Orbit speak or the or sorry the Orbit devices. Any updates on that if you talk to Mike over at Numa Solutions about their platform being on Orbit products?

Venkatesh Chari
Yeah, that's a very good question, Brandon. So we have spoken recently about it with Mike. We did explore it a while back. And for various reasons, we didn't exactly move forward with that, partly because at that time the Orbit Speak itself was running very behind schedule. So we had various other priorities. But thanks for that reminder. It's certainly something that it's perhaps a good time to explore again.

Speaker 5
Also, any news of any upcoming updates to the app catalog since it's been out for a bit now?

Venkatesh Chari
Yes, so there are other apps that we are working on. And as I was mentioning earlier, We hope to have an announcement later this month, rather later next month in October. So yes, the big task there was for us to get that capability built into our platform, including our own native screen reading functionality. So with that in place, it does enable us to add more apps. But it's a slow and rather laborious process because even though these apps, what we call third-party apps remain not supported by Orbit, we still want to make sure that at least they the function. And so testing that and making sure it is at least at a certain level of functionality is a pretty detailed task. So that's what takes us time. That said, we would love to have folks suggestions on apps that they would like to see, we will get started on trying to load them and test them and make them available through the app catalog. I think what we heard last time from folks was people were, of course, asking about Audible support, about Kindle, about Sirius XM. So if there are others, please do tell us. We'd be happy to to take them into consideration.

Speaker 5
Also, two final questions real quick. One is when it comes to ReadSpeaker being available in the future for those who purchase an Orbit speaker, Orbit player at that time, will those voices be included at no charge considering at the time the products would have just come out?

Venkatesh Chari
The ReadSpeaker at the moment is going to be a paid add-on because it's a third-party TTS which has a license and a royalty that we have to pay to the owner of the IP. So regardless of when the product is purchased, it'll not come out-of-the-box with it. It'll be an add-on. So regardless of whether it's someone who's buying a fresh device or someone who's had it for some time.

Speaker 5
And my final question as well, now that the version 2 cycle is here, if somebody were to have the older version, will there be Any recustomization of keys because I know if you have 1.7 and earlier F4 used to be holding down F4 used to be for the audio tutorial. Any plans on remapping the older keys for something else or will the old stuff be revitalized like an audio tutorial for version two?

Venkatesh Chari
So, yes, so the in terms of the keys, I mean the keys are have were always intended to also be remappable to reconfigurable, so that intent is still there. it's and it's something that we we're gonna do for pretty much all of our products. as far as the tutorial is concerned, the challenge has been that software and features have moved pretty rapidly, and it's kind of been a moving target as far as tutorial development is concerned. It is certainly the intent to have a tutorial that is available on the device. We're working on how best to do that for each of the products, you know, what's a simple and scalable paths to do that. We do anticipate software improvements to come, though of course there will not be, there'll probably not be major shifts in the UI for some time. But as we learn of issues, as we add more functionality, we do anticipate changes to come and then it becomes hard for the tutorial to keep up. So trying to figure out what a good way is to keep it in sync with the software and the device.

Robert Carter
All right, thank you, Brandon. Hope you have a good afternoon. Ken, you're up next. Please unmute and go ahead.

Speaker 12
I was going to say maybe like for an app suggestion, if you for some reason could not get the NFP Newsline thing to work, maybe you could put the Android version of the NFP Newsline app on there instead.

Venkatesh Chari
You mean the NFB Newsline Android app in putting that? Yeah. So that is certainly an option. But at this point in time, we are very close to having a native app. app for it and we're expecting that the release plan for next month 2.4 will include that and the advantage of the native apps is that they are designed for our user interface, the tactile interface, the buttons and keys, the navigation methods, and the overall style of the UI will be identical to navigating any other app. So that's currently where our focus is to try to do that for as many apps as possible. Now, that said, what you're suggesting would actually have made sense to implement had we had this third-party app capability, a few months ago or a year ago. But unfortunately, at that time, we did not have that capability. So that's a very good suggestion. And NFV Newsline, had we not been already so far along in the development of our native app for it, that would definitely have been a good possibility. Yeah.

Speaker 12
Okay. Also, I do want to say if that Hero app is the only way to watch movies and TV shows on the Orbit Speak, then I would probably take it. Only if I would have a subscription already for it.

Venkatesh Chari
Do you mean, I'm sorry, which app was it that you mentioned? Hero app.

Speaker 12
No. SERO.

Venkatesh Chari
Oh, zero, zero app.

Speaker 12
Yes, If that was the only way to watch movies and TV shows, then I would take it.

Venkatesh Chari
Right, I think that's a great suggestion. Yeah.

Speaker 12
Since someone was talking about asking new much solutions about their apps.

Venkatesh Chari
Yeah. definitely. at the time that we spoke with them previously, that was definitely one of the attractions. So thanks again for bringing that up. It's something that we will reinitiate.

Robert Carter
All right. Well, thank you, Ken. Maria, you are going to be our last victim of the day. So step right up and tell us what you got.

Speaker 4
Thank you. I wanted to follow up on my outstanding items from earlier. First, I am still receiving intermittently this communication error, please restart device from the player, even when it is in sleep mode. So that is still happening. I had power cycled again, and so that's still occurring. And following the power cycle again, the speech speed had reset. So again, that is happening consistently. And regarding the audio books, the Bookshare Humanary audiobooks. It does appear that some perhaps some additional work regarding integrating with some features of that API needs to happen. What is happening now, I tried downloading an audiobook. I used the Speak just to change things up. The book that I tried, I've seen this with others that I've tried in the past, but just for your reference to reproduce, the one that I tried it with now is called Awakened Sleep, and there's a subtitle relating to Ayurveda and sleep and such. So first, it doesn't identify which of the versions is the audio book, which is what, in terms of the, for example, the voice stream reader app on iOS, there is that identification. And second, when I do try to download it, so whereas with this book is also available on Bookshare as a text file, right, DAISY or EPUB, right, in the case of the player, and when I try to download those, text-based versions, I am prompted to select the format from those two. And I mean, there are other Bookshare formats, right, but these are the ones that the book reader is supporting for Bookshare. And then, but when I try and download the audio book, instead of being prompted to select a format, which presumably would be like Daisy 3 audio or some such, I am getting an error message that says location not found. So it does seem to be that there is some kind of additional work that needs to happen and I'm not Not that surprised, seeing as I remember Voice Stream Reader that was a separate, feature at some point added support for these audiobooks, and I remember, well, someone I think said even now, right, that today on this call that with the HumanWare product that they had to separately add that as well as some kind of a feature. So, while I definitely in theory, right, the underlying architecture is there, but it does seem like that there is some kind of additional support that needs to be added in with that, perhaps with that API or other.

Speaker 8
This is Richard again, if I can chime in to support what she's saying, but also to point out, if you download it on a computer and put it on the card, the speak will play it. So it's not an issue of compatibility. The issue is when you go to download a human-read audiobook, it's put into your history. It's a webpage called My History. And because it's not immediately available until they do whatever they do behind the scenes to make it available. And then there's an available link you have to click on to download the book.

Speaker 4
That's really interesting. Just to chime in, what I have used, and I've only had occasion, I've used maybe like three or four or so of these Bookshare audiobooks when they've come up, when I've searched. When I do it in Voice Stream Reader, it does, I mean, it seems to make it like it, yes, stuff is happening behind the scenes, but it doesn't take like hours and hours. Like when I do try and download it, it'll just say waiting, and then it says waiting for a while, for like, I don't know, like 5, 5 minutes or whatever, I don't know, not even maybe, but like, and then it It will start downloading.

Speaker 8
Right. And Venk Dish and his programs would have to consult with the voice stream programmers to see how they did that. Because if you do it on a computer, you definitely have to then go to your My History and then download it after it becomes available. So I think they're probably doing all of that in the background and rerouting to that download link. But that's a guess because I'm not a programmer. I don't have a clue on the plan.

Speaker 4
Yeah, I would say probably the Benetech, right? The people behind Bookshare, they would probably know, right? Since there are a couple of devices that now support it, so they should be able to provide for it. Yeah. Thanks.

Speaker 8
Yeah.

Venkatesh Chari
Thanks very much, Maria and Richard. That's really good feedback. I'll have this looked into right away. I was not aware. Perhaps the team didn't know about it. I just want you to know that we are also working on improvements to the experience for each individual library. And just as you mentioned for Bookshare, there are other issues. We talked about Newsline in the past. So we're working on each of these separately to try to address the nuances of each. So we're expecting that in the release in October, we will have certain libraries have significant improvements and then the remaining ones will come one after the other. This particular issue with downloading and playback of audiobooks, I will investigate and try to send a message out to the user community so that everyone's on the same page about what they can expect now and in the future.

Robert Carter
All right. Well, this has been a very productive meeting. It's great to have all this participation. Thank you all so much for being here. Any final comments, Venkatesh?

Venkatesh Chari
No, I think we covered a lot of good ground. Thanks everyone for joining and making this interactive and really fun. Thanks Robert for hosting it. It's always a pleasure to be with all of you.

Robert Carter
All right. We will be back, of course, sometime near the end of October with another one of these because they work out so well. Thank you, Vankatech. Appreciate you being here, and we will talk again soon. So long, everybody.

Venkatesh Chari
Thank you. Bye-bye.
