Tuesday was the first day of the 3 day Sight Village Exhibition. All the usual suspects from the assistive technology industry were out in force. And it was tremendous to catch up with some old friends as well as make some new ones.
Including yours truly Dolphin had a good sized team on the ground, all describing and demonstrating our range of access and alt format products to enthusiastic audiences.
Sight Village is a valuable opportunity for the industry to benefit from a diverse range of user perspectives, and it is also a chance for the people who support the industry to come and meet the companies who make it all happen. I am intrigued by the range of people who make it to Sight Village: parents, children, teachers, students, IT professionals, assistive technology advisers, home users, elderly people, and many more. As someone who enjoys meeting people, I find it fascinating to learn about the different contexts in which people are using assistive technology products and services.
Visitors to the Dolphin stand were able to take a glimpse into the future of Pocket Hal, including support for the ETI Eloquence speech synthesiser, plus an early alpha version of Pocket Hal running on a Windows SmartPhone! I believe Dolphin have been the first company to publicly demonstrate Eloquence working with a genuine pocket screen reader in the Windows Mobile environment, and the first to demonstrate a functional screen reader on a Windows Smartphone. If you know different then I would love to hear from you.
If you did not go to Sight Village on Tuesday, hopefully we will see you there on Wednesday or Thursday.
It has been a long but rewarding first day, and it is time for me to see about getting some food and sleep.
Pippity pop.