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The following recent messages from PlusNet and Orange tell me two things:

1. They have been cutting costs and not investing in people.

2. It is probably time I voted with my wallet.

PlusNet – “Service disruption has always been there, but not in the same frequency as the last two or three months. As regards the experience that some customers have had in that period, we are truly sorry. We are determined that we will not allow this collection of circumstances to be recreated in the future.”

Orange – “We have received your mail and will respond as soon as we can however, we have received a high volume of emails recently which may delay our response.”

Both companies collect money through premium rate tech support lines, and Orange make further savings by outsourcing to India, charging for previously free services and discontinuing others. These are not small companies by any stretch of the imagination and recent performance is pathetic. One friend of mine has recently voted with her purse and cancelled her PlusNet subscription after PlusNet lost all her mail and did not offer anything by way of good will.

So how can they put this right. As well as fixing the technical issues, Invest in people and get some positive PR by showing they are socially responsible by doing something for the community.

Blogged about this new service from Google just the other day. El Reg has prob the most comprehensive piece I have found yet.

Interestingly though, DaveWilliams.co.uk meets the vast majority of accessibility guidelines and is XHTML 1.0 compliant. However, DaveWilliams.co.uk only makes it to position six in the results on the Accessible search page, for the phrase Dave Williams without quotes or plus signs. And performing the same search on the main Google service finds us in second place.

Welcome to a world according to Google. What more should I be doing to improve the usability of this site? I have made sure it is compliant with web standards and tested it in a number of browsers. IE, Pocket IE, Firefox, and in the default browser on Simbian S60 phones. A couple of Linux users occasionally drop by and I have not heard any complaints from them either. Dear reader I respectfully submit that this level of testing is a hell of a lot more than the majority of web sites undergo.

I had a hard time believing the authenticity of this post. How does a marketing director allow them selvs to be reduced to this?

As someone who as been with PlusNet for 6 years or more, I am still giving my ISP the benefit of the doubt by not switching provider. But I do have serious concerns about the direction in which PlusNet has been moving. See my posts for 27 April and 17 June.

Sure everyone else is blogging about this, but no one seems to have spotted that Google is falling over itself to be politically correct, cannot make up their minds about how to refer to blind people Visually challenged? Visually impaired? For goodness sake make up your mind Google.

Yes I am sure we in blind land are expected to be falling over our selvs to thank Google for this latest offering. But to my mind this is lipservice which completely fails to address core access issues with Google’s own services.

The stands and technology are all packed away, and the exhibitors have gone home following another busy Sight Village.

This morning was pretty gruelling with a steady flow of visitors to the Dolphin stand. This afternoon things calmed down and we started packing away around 4PM.

2006 has to have been one of the hottest Sight Villages on record, definitely up there with the sweltering summer of 2003 which was the last Sight Village at QAC. Housing the event continues to be a problem. Navigating around the building is challenging at best, and the standard of the food on offer is shocking for an event which is the premier exhibition of products and services for the blind. It is the eyes which do not work, not the taste buds!

Lots of mobile products at Sight Village this year many of which I discussed yesterday, along with the 1200GBP 40 cell budget braille display from RNIB.

I am very fond of the new pocket-sized Braille Connect 12 cell display manufactured by Baum and sold in English speaking markets by Humanware. I have seen this device quite a few times over the last couple of weeks in Jacksonville at the ACB convention and again this week at Sight Village in Birmingham UK. Every time I lay hands on one I am very tempted to place an order. It is not without it’s shortcomings however, the braille input keys on this device have a very shallow action and would benefit from a couple of springs and being raised just a couple more millimetres. I am assured it will be supplied with a protective case, the quality of the case remains to be seen. I have heard claims that a nokia charger can be used to recharge the battery in this device, but my attempts with a couple of standard Nokia chargers failed. However the standard SuperVario Brailliant charger can be used, although mini USB charging would have been preferable.

I was definitely ready to come home after Sight Village, although probably not prepared for the stack of bills in my mail box. Council Tax in Worcester is horrific, and for what? Ho hum.

With 35 degrees C being the high in the Midlands today, most people are finding the heat and humidity horrendous. It is as hot hear in the UK as it was last week in Florida. The difference being the Americans have air con in most buildings, where as usually in the UK we do not have a need for such extravagancies.

The intense heat did not prevent hundreds of people turning out for day 2 of the 2006 Sight Village exhibition. Today as well as representing Dolphin again at Sight Village, I got the chance to lay hands on the new Braille Seika which is a budget 40 cell braille display costing just 1200GBP available in the UK from RNIB. This works out to about 30 pounds per cell which is around a third of the cost of many displays currently on the market. The display emulates the PowerBraille and so is compatible with most popular screen reading software. Personally I feel the Seika build quality lieves a lot to be desired. The unit is relatively large and heavy and the control buttons on the front edge of the unit felt slightly loose. If you are someone who likes your braille to be sharp and crisp this is not the display for you. Having said that, 1200 quid is an astonishingly low price for 40 cells of braille and hopefully products like this will shake up the industry. My only worry is that it potentially could lead to low quality product from the other manufacturers as they chase more affordable braille. Let us hope not.

Also at the RNIB stand I caught up with the developers of Talks, the first screen reader for mobile phones. I am a big fan of Talks on Simbian as it really spawned an industry of software products which provide comprehensive access to main stream mobile devices available from main stream suppliers at main stream prices. I took the free upgrade from version 2.5 to version 3 which includes: a graphic object labelling tool, automatic reading of caller ID, a user dictionary and support for more third party TTS. I am pleased to say that Talks 3 will not be available as public beta, and certainly the product installed on my Simbian phone feels like the stable and responsive real deal which we have come to expect from Talks. I would much rather the guys from nuance focused on the product rather than trying to support a massive public beta testing process. Final release expected at the end of the month.

Anyone reading my blog for some time will know I spent about a year raving about the Nokia N91 and N80 handsets which are based on Simbian S60 3rd edition. Congratulations to Nuance for being the first to provide comprehensive access to this platform. While many of us may be thinking about Windows Mobile based devices, we cannot ignore the fact that Simbian still represents over half of the Smartphone market.

As well as getting my first hands on with the N91 today, I got to check out a couple of the Nokia E series handsets which are also based on S60 3rd edition. The E60 WCDMA and WLAN capable handset, has a classic design, sleek metallic finish and feels tremendous in the hand. The E61 is basically a BlackBerry-type device targeted at frequent mobile emailers. The internal speakers on both devices are surprisingly good. After a period of seeming silence from Nuance, it is marvelous to hear the range of Talks capable devices expand to include the E series and the N series handsets.

Dolphin have announced progress on Smart Hal, which will be a complete screen reader for Windows Mobile Smartphones. This is a natural evolution of Hal from the desktop through Pocket PC/Windows mobile and soon to be Windows Mobile based smartphones. Dolphin will also be the first UK company to have developed a complete screen reader for mobile phones. The spannish company Code Factory who have been promising Windows Smartphone access for some time, are now estimating the end of the month as a possible release date for their Windows smartphone access.

For those of us with a vested interest in access to main stream mobile devices, the future is looking very bright indeed.

The temperature tomorrow is expected to be down from today around 31 degrees C. Still a tad too warm for my English sensibilities. Ah well, normality will resume shortly.