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Please help a blind person with voice control

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peterh337

Android Enthusiast
Hi All,

I am trying to set up a tablet (Samsung S7 9.7) to be used by a person with very poor eyesight.

The objective is not to ask where the nearest MacDonalds is, but to make it dial a Skype or Whatsapp call.

Unfortunately, the voice command functionality seems to be basically useless, other than for trivia like "what is the weather in Argentina?".

Most of the time the stupid program replies with "I cannot make calls yet". The internet has many hours of reading about thousands of others tearing their hair out over this exact useless response.

We have tried uninstalling updates to the Google app, various permutations of that, disabling mobile data (wifi-only is fine in this application since the person cannot really walk around much) but nothing works.

To make it worse, a lot of the time it is simply not responding to the voice input - like the mike gain was too low, but there is no control for that.

How can google, with all their resources, produce such junk?

IOS devices are normally better for "user friendly" stuff but we bought Android because the main player in the partially-sighted marked is a thing called Synapptic, which requires Android (not least because it has to disable the three buttons, because pressing any of them by accident, which is virtually assured in the real world, will render the device useless to anyone who cannot see well) but that app is useless for other reasons: it cannot make Skype or Whatsapp calls. It can make only GSM calls which is no good for calling people in other countries (hugely costly).

Am I missing something obvious, or something which changed in the last few months?

The tablet is on Android 7.0 with the June 2018 OS update.
 
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From what you're describing it sounds like the problems are with "this thing called "Synapptic" rather than Google, such as its apparent inability to use Skype and WhatsApp, and possibly other third-party apps. And so I think any usability and support problems would really need to be addressed by Synapptic themselves. http://www.synapptic.com/contact.aspx
This thing isn't cheap and they're in the UK(not China), so they should provide good support for their product.

FWIW I know two blind people and they're actually using iPhones rather than Android devices. They're able to use things like Skype with them. And they're only using the stock iOS accessibility features. Previously they'd been using Nokia Symbian phones with Nuance Talks.
 
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Many thanks. I will look up Nuance. It does however look like a dictation product, rather than a product to which you can say e.g.

whatsapp call john

and it launches whatsapp etc. The native android functionality can do this but cannot make calls; it can only send messages (although some people say they can make calls work with an old version of the google app). Also there is no capability for choosing between several numbers for the same contact, etc.

We are not using Synapptic; the issue with voice recognition is nothing to do with that. Synapptic is just an app which gives you four huge buttons which launch apps. It doesn't do voice.

On an Iphone, how do you stop accidental touches of the buttons? Apple don't allow apps to "block" the buttons.

The current voice recognition stuff all assumes that the user can see well enough to manually fix any screwup :)
 
peterh337 said:
Many thanks. I will look up Nuance. It does however look like a dictation product, rather than a product to which you can say e.g.

whatsapp call john

and it launches whatsapp etc. The native android functionality can do this but cannot make calls; it can only send messages (although some people say they can make calls work with an old version of the google app). Also there is no capability for choosing between several numbers for the same contact, etc.

We are not using Synapptic; the issue with voice recognition is nothing to do with that. Synapptic is just an app which gives you four huge buttons which launch apps. It doesn't do voice.
Click to expand...

Reading through their website, I got the idea it's supposed to be complete accessibility suite for the visually impaired, including voice. They're charging £199 GBP for the app and service, which is a lot of money if it's only giving four huge buttons.


peterh337 said:
On an Iphone, how do you stop accidental touches of the buttons? Apple don't allow apps to "block" the buttons.
Click to expand...

iOS's built-in accessibility features take care of that, and AFAIK iOS apps must comply with Apple's strict accessibility guidelines.


peterh337 said:
The current voice recognition stuff all assumes that the user can see well enough to manually fix any screwup :)
Click to expand...

I know two completely blind iPhone users in the UK. And they seem to have no problems with them. :)
 
Do they make GSM calls, or internet calls?

The problem is smaller if you are happy to make GSM calls. Then you just have to buy an international calling package, say £10/month :) You cannot make group calls, however.
 
Synapptic is indeed a fairly usable solution. The voice functionality is ok too. It just stops short in various areas e.g. you can skype someone but since it cannot access the skype address book (and skype cannot apparently use the device's Contacts) you have to configure the contact(s) in the program itself. We have spent about 2 days on it so far and worked out a lot of it, but the basic problem is that a lot of the functions take you to the underlying android app and then only a fully sighted person can get out of the situation.
 
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