Joe has known Gareth Collins, Tech Support Manager for Dolphin, for a longer amount of time than either would probably like to admit. But here's a clue... Joe started out as a Dolphin beta tester for Supernova/Lunar v3.0 ages ago. A lot has changed from that version and from our ATIA 2019 coverage. Mr. Collins provides Joe with some of the key features that come in Supernova 19 regarding text sharpening and other text enhancements. He additionally gives an overview of the new Guide Connect and its remote control options. Lastly, Joe learns about some updates to Easy Reader and Dolphin Converter. To learn more about these products, visit the Dolphin Computer Access website
ATIA 2020 coverage is Brought to you by AFB AccessWorld.
For the latest news and accessibility information on mainstream and access technology, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offerings, access technology book reviews, and mobile apps, and how they can enhance entertainment, education and employment, log on to AccessWorld, the American Foundation for the Blind's free, monthly, online technology magazine. Visit www.afb.org/aw.
Transcript
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Hide transcriptTranscribed by Grecia Ramirez
From Orlando – almost live -- it’s blindbargains.com coverage of ATIA 2020, brought to you by AFB AccessWorld.
For the latest news and accessibility information on mainstream and access technology; Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offerings; access technology; book reviews; and mobile apps and how they can enhance entertainment, education, and employment, log onto AccessWorld, the American Foundation for the Blind's free monthly online technology magazine. www.AFB.org/AW.
Now, here’s Joe Steincamp.
JOE STEINCAMP: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the floor of ATIA. I’m here with Mr. Gareth Collins of Dolphin.
GARETH COLLINS: I’m Gareth Collins, and I’m from Dolphin Computer Access.
JS: Yup.
GC: And what we’re showing here in our booth today is Supernova 19, which was released on Monday. The new features in Supernova 19 are, in terms of magnification, we have now the ability to have bold text on the screen, so bold fonts. We also have the ability now for low-contrast text to have text sharpening, which kind of – it’s almost like a halo around the edges of the text to separate it a bit more from the background, emphasizes the text.
JS: Okay. Can you control to color or is it just a general –
GC: It’s a general, kind of like, edge-enhancement algorithm, but you can control, like, the amount and the size of it --
JS: Okay. So not –
GC: -- but not the color.
JS: -- the thickness or making it bold or something –
GC: Well, yeah. Yeah. That – I mean, the thickness of the enhancement – the halo around the edge –
JS: Right.
GC: -- you can control.
JS: Awesome. Okay.
GC: So – yeah. So image sharpening and boldness. That’s what we call our image enhancements.
JS: Okay.
GC: We also have extended our Connect & View feature in Supernova. And for those that don’t know about it, Connect & View allows you to connect Supernova to a webcam or a digital white board via VNC –
JS: Got you.
GC: -- and you can bring that up in split-screen mode or full screen, or if you have multiple monitors, put the image from the webcam on your second monitor.
JS: Got you.
GC: And what you can do with that is you can capture the image and maybe paste it into a Word document if you’ve been given a handout, or you can OCR it and read it. In the Connect & View feature, you can OCR text or OCR the white board if it’s got printed text, not handwriting --
JS: Understood.
GC: -- and be able to read that and add more pages.
JS: Okay.
GC: So you can add more pages from the webcam, and then you can export it to Microsoft Word, and you’ve got the choice of preserving the text formatting or the formatting plus the layout or just plain text.
JS: Got you. Okay. Perfect.
GC: So that’s Connect & View.
And then, on the speech side, we’ve only made a few minor improvements. One is that when you’re doing a “read from here,” which is a bit like “say all” --
JS: Right.
GC: -- you can now use the quick navigation keys while it’s reading, you know, to skip back, previous paragraph, next paragraph –
JS: Oh. Okay.
GC: -- next heading, previous heading, that kind of thing.
JS: Awesome. Okay.
GC: So those are the main new things -- are Supernova.
JS: Uh-huh.
GC: We also have GuideConnect --
JS: Right.
GC: -- which, that came out last year –
JS: Right.
GC: -- so -- I think this time last year, it hadn’t -- I think it was March when it was released in the U.S., so that might be a new product that your listeners don’t know about. And it replaces our old Guide software. And so –
JS: So built from the ground up, all new –
GC: All new – kind of a C++ rather than virtual basic, but the main thing is it now uses the chromium web browser, kind of all new components, you know.
JS: Really. Okay.
GC: And so it’s all new. You can obviously install it on a PC or a desktop or a tablet.
JS: Right.
GC: But we also sell it on – it’s almost like the Apple TV idea on a little tiny Window 10 computer that you can plug into your HDMI port of your TV --
JS: Right.
GC: -- and have a Bluetooth remote control.
JS: Okay.
GC: And one of the new features we added a few months back is the remote control now has a microphone in it because we built support for Microsoft’s Cortana speech engine in it so that when you’re on a webpage, you can do a Google search from – using your voice.
JS: Right. Okay. That’s –
GC: -- which is, you know, especially if you’re using a remote control, not having to arrow over to the onscreen keyboard a letter at a time, you know, is quite –
JS: But still, the simple interface that Guide has been known for –
GC: Exactly. Exactly. So --
JS: Right.
GC: -- and that was just a way to kind of speed it up. So that’s GuideConnect.
JS: Cool.
GC: EasyReader: So we have our free EasyReader apps in the app store, Android and IOS.
JS: And that’s been getting steady updates.
GC: Yeah.
JS: Yeah.
GC: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think the last one -- support – we added supported, I think CELA library in Canada had changed the format of some of their books, maybe went to Daisy 3 or something, so we had to do a little update for that. And we keep adding more and more national libraries around the world to it.
JS: Definitely.
GC: EasyConverter hasn’t changed that much, although we have a cut down version of it that can appear as a plugin for Microsoft Word that allows you just to make quick conversions to, you know, Daisy format.
JS: Oh, that is fantastic, actually. Okay.
GC: -- from – from Microsoft Word. So that’s -- yeah. That’s basically what we’ve got here.
JS: Okay. Cool. And all of that, of course, is available either through the U.S. or the U.K. site. As you were saying to someone else a moment ago, I –
GC: Yeah. We have the national distributor, Irie-AT, based in Oregon, and they can – they sell all of our products and also support our all of our products as well. So – yeah. Especially if you’re in the western United States is probably easier time zonewise to get support if someone’s in Pacific Time rather than Eastern.
JS: Absolutely. Otherwise they can go to yourdolphin.com.
GC: Yes. Exactly.
JS: Gareth, it is always a pleasure to get you in front of the microphone. I appreciate it, my friend.
GC: Okay. No problem, Joe.
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Joe Steinkamp is no stranger to the world of technology, having been a user of video magnification and blindness related electronic devices since 1979. Joe has worked in radio, retail management and Vocational Rehabilitation for blind and low vision individuals in Texas. He has been writing about the A.T. Industry for 15 years and podcasting about it for almost a decade.
