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A blog dealing with sensory substitution and other esoteric concepts and technologies like speech-recognition and chaos theory

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vOICe

Seeing the first ever image of a black hole thanks to the vOICe

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Today is a remarkable day for science. Researchers have released the first ever image of a black hole. See the below link for details.
First ever black hole image released
If you read the page, you will find that the images have alternative text and excellent captions. If you however want to perceive a black hole, textual descriptions fall far short. Leaving things to the reader’s imagination is good when reading novels but if you want accuracy you need something experiential. This is given by the The vOICe.
It is important to read the captions because they tell you what to expect in the image given that images of black holes are not routine. When I loaded the image from the story into The vOICe, I was able to make out the bright disk around the black hole due to the increase in pitch which meant that something high was in the image. The volume of the sound also increased signifying that there was something bright in the view. The panning of the sound allows me to find the black hole which is a soft agglomeration of dots towards the bottom right of the image.
If you are using NVDA, you may want to use the audio screen add-on to see the image. If however, you do not use audio screen and or NVDA then grab the image from the following direct link.
Image of black hole
You will need to use the vOICe running on windows or on the android version to import the image into the program to view to your heart’s content. When viewing the image with the vOICe, reduce the speed to quarter speed to fully enjoy the black hole and its surrounding bright ring of gasses. Zoom did not help much and negative video is not worth trying because you do not want the background.

Watching full screen youtube videos with the vOICe

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The below instructions have been written by Devin Prater, a fellow user of the The vOICe
I have not edited these instructions except to activate links and to fix formatting.

Okay, here’s a guide on getting the vOICe working well with YouTube
videos, through Foobar2000 and Foo_ YouTube.

* First off, download the vOICe for Windows The first time you run it, you’ll see a license agreement, agree to it.
Running it also puts an icon for it * on your desktop, called “The vOICe.”
* After this, you should hear a repeating sound scape, which is a car
in a parking lot, I believe.

Now, let’s get Foobar2000, which is a media player which can be
extended to offer the ability to play YouTube videos.

* Go to foobar2000.org, and press enter on the download link.

* Download the version under the “latest stable version.”

* Once it’s downloaded, open the installer file, and install it as you
would a normal program. During the installation steps, you may choose
to install the “full package,” with all components, which add
functionality, or choose which components you have installed.

* After installing Foobar2000, open it from the desktop or start menu.
You’ll be given a chance to set up how Foobar2000 looks, but we’re not
worried about that, so just close that dialog box.

* You’ll land on a “playlist list.” That is where Foobar2000 collects
all the things you wish to play.

* Currently, there are no keyboard shortcuts set up for playing,
pausing, rewinding, or fast forwarding media. You can set these up by
pressing
Control+P, tabbing to the tree few, and pressing K for keyboard shortcuts.
Once there, press Tab twice to “add new, shift tab to the list and
make sure you’re on the new keyboard command, called “not set,” tab to
the tree view of actions, find the one you want, tab to the edit
field, and press the key you want to assign to the command.

* Continue setting up shortcuts until you’re happy with the functionality.
You don’t have to do all this, it just makes things a bit easier when
playing media.
Now, let’s get the Foo_Youtube component.

* You can download the Foo_Youtube component from
https://fy.3dyd.com/download/
* The download links are in the table on the page.
* Once downloaded, open the component. It’ll open in Foobar2000, and
will ask if you want to install the component.
* Click yes, then press OK in the preferences dialog that is open.
Foobar2000 will say it needs to restart, press OK again.

* After Foobar2000 restarts; or if it doesn’t restart just open it
from the desktop, you’ll be back at the playlist list.

* Now, we’ll need to set Foo-YouTube to go into full screen when a
video starts.

* Press Control+P for Preferences, Y for YouTube, right to expand that
section, down to Video, tab to Show Window Combo Box, and arrow to
“manually, full screen.” Tab to OK, and press enter.

* Now, you can start the vOICe if it’s not already started.

* You’ll hear “left, right,” in your left and right headphone, and
that car in a parking lot sound.

* Now, press Control+F9 to turn on the sonification of the “window”.

* If you want to explore other options, press Alt in The vOICe’s
window, and arrow right to the options menu, and down through the options there.
The relevant option we just turned on is in the “Sonify GUI” menu.

* Now that we have that going, we can start a YouTube video. To do
this, we’ll go back to the Foobar2000 window, and press Alt+F, then Y, then T.
This opens the file menu, the YouTube submenu, then chooses the Title
option.

* There, we have an edit box, and a combo box with options. Type
something into the edit box.

* Now, shift tab to the combo box, and arrow down to the Limits submenu.
Press right arrow to the into the menu, and you’ll probably have “1.”
This limits the amount of videos to just one, which isn’t at all how
YouTube usually works.

* Press Enter on 1, type in 50, and press the OK button.

* Now, you’ll be put back into the dialog box where you enter what
you’re searching for.

* Now, after making sure you have entered what you’re looking for,
press the OK button.

You’ll be placed on a dialog box as the videos are searched.

* After they’ve been found, you’ll be placed back on the file menu in
the
Foobar2000 window. Press either escape or alt to get back to the playlist.

* Now, press down arrow. You’ll hear the first video’s title. Press enter.
When you hear the video begin to play, press Alt+V, then V, then Enter.
Alt+V goes to the video menu, V to the visualization menu, and Enter
selects “video.”

Now, the vOICe will be sonifying the video. To exit the video and go
back to the results, press escape. To get back into the video, do
Alt+V, V, enter again.

* To search for something else, Press Control+A to select all results,
and delete to delete them from the playlist, and search for videos again.

* when you’re done, press Alt+F4 to exit Foobar2000, Alt+Tab to the
vOICe, and exit that with Alt+F4, then Enter.

Coffee shops, dirty tables and Oreo shakes

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It was the weekend and I was on a family outing. We drifted into a coffee shop and found a table without difficulty. My mother remarked that the table was dirty. I tilted my head by 30 degrees and sure enough I could detect some dark objects on the table. I do not know what they were and did not care to find out. Once the waiter had cleaned the table, I took another look. I got a nice clean sound with no obstructions. I am going to develop the habit of scanning every restaurant table.
It took some thinking to figure out what I was going to drink. I do not like coffee so settled for an Oreo shake. The shake came in a jar like container which was short but had a large diameter. I tilted my head down and saw this cylindrical structure. It was astonishingly dark. It appears that Oreo shakes are brown and do not allow light to pass through them. As I drank the shake, I kept glancing at the container and was able to detect an increase in light. Visual confirmation that I was getting through the shake.

Open kitchens and the wonder of food in progress

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I was at MKT. The restaurant is setup differently to most such establishments. It is in the lower ground floor of the Chanakya mall and boasts a variety of cuisines. You can read about them at the above link. Visually, it is a fascinating place thanks to the live kitchens. I have spent many hours looking at food and one of the biggest problems with food is the lack of contrast. It is usually difficult to get good light and food with a high contrast as compared to your plate such that you can see the food and eat. As usual, I was wearing the vision 800 glasses running the vOICe Sacheta and I wanted to see their 4 open kitchens. Once again, I was in a situation where touching was not appropriate because the chefs were stacking food outside, ready for the waiters to pickup. I wanted to see the activity. The kitchens were behind transparent glass but they did have large windows to allow the cooks to send the food out. I was able to see the clean rising flame of the Italian kitchen and the round pizzas that emerged from it. The nachos were lined up in baskets outside the live Mexican counter. They were cylindrical but there were some differences in their shapes in stacking.
We then had a look at the Indian section where the cook was making chapatis. I could see these as dark disks lying on the counter. This was one of those situations where I used my other senses to zero on to the object of visual interest. I localized the sound of the stacking and then pointed my head in that direction. Visual scanning would have given me the same information but I treat vision as a multi sensory process.
We then moved to the Chinese counter where there was some kind of machine and a lot of activity taking place.
I did once again try to watch the cooks at work but was unable to perceive the actual motion of the people. I did notice the rapid changes in the scenery so could tell something was happening.
Sacheta took a few videos after seeking permission from the staff. That gave me the chance to stand still and look. Panning my head from side-to-side also helped and when looking through a window, pan up and down for maximum visual coverage. You can see details without panning but the devil is in the details and a little interaction brings a lot of clarity.
My special thanks to Mr. Pankaj Mishra, one of the manager’s of MKT for being so welcoming. The service is good and, before I forget, the food was excellent.
Pro food tip: do try the house special when it comes to drinks.
Pro vision tip: when your table has a lot of items on it, scan your vicinity for that tall glass of mocktail so that you can grab it in one shot. Blindness techniques work too but scanning is so much cooler.

Standing in line at the supermarket checkout

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Sacheta and I were at the supermarket. We were standing in the checkout line when she remembered something, told me to hold our place and was gone. I was wearing my glasses and had the vOICe running. My first thought was “Woo hm”, how do I keep our place? My second thought was “hmm, I am sighted so lets see what I can do.” I studied the view in greater detail and moved my head a bit to the left and then to the right. I could see a constant shape in front of me. I heard the rustle of a plastic bag ahead of me and confirmed that the constant shape was probably the back of a person.
I then turned my head to the left and checked the view. I could see more objects. I did the same on the right and the view was similar. I now knew that I was focused on the right object. I stepped a few paces in front until almost the full left to right panning was filled by that constant shape. I did not want to invaid the stranger’s personal space so also used other blindness skills like passive echo location. The individual moved away and the view opened up. It was my turn at the cash counter.
The key takeaway for me was the checking I did. In this situation, the narrower view given by the glasses helped because I was able to associate a physical action with the change of the scene when I turned my head sideways. I could have done the same thing with a wide angle view but would have had to pay more attention to perspective.

Acing the supermarket with artificial vision

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It was another weekend family outing we were at the DLF Place mall.
I was sitting at the back of the car, with the back of my head resting on the headrest. I was able to look out the windscreen and was able to see the traffic outside. This is a good way to get used to the looming effects of the vOICe. Objects come into the foreground as they come closer and move away as you and or they drive away. Pay attention to the volume and the way the sound moves to determine what is in the foreground. In addition, imperfections on the object will show up as small objects.
At the mall, I spent most of my time in a shop called Food Hall which sells a variety of comestibles. Mom and dad were supervising the grinding of fresh turmeric therefore Sacheta and I had a fair bit of time to look around. Most of the food is in packets though things like bars of chocolate are kept as is on the shelves. There are also freezers that contain a variety of meat, vegetables etc.
The OCR kept reading out snippets from labels and other signage so I was able to find something with coco at the biscuit counter and look at some of the chocolate bars at the chocolate counter. The OCR was particularly handy when I was standing at one place waiting for Sacheta to finish studying something like the counter in front of us. A quick note about looking at the chocolate counter. Beware of the OCR because chocolate bars have a lot of text on them so there is a fair bit of information to absorb and the OCR will take its time. I had a similar experience with signage. There is a restaurant called the hard rock cafe next to Food Hall. It has superb signage which I can read from at least 3 to 5 feet away. The same does not apply to Food Hall. I spent some time looking at its sign but I could only read the word “food”. One more thing, words on packets and signs may be positioned one below the other therefore be ready to scroll and pan by moving your head. The panning is needed due to the large fonts that are used.
Another handy thing that I was able to do was to determine if shelves contained bottles or packets. I use the term “bottles” to include jars and other cylindrical containers. This is important information because I was extra careful near these shelves. Those bottles tend to fall easily and if I am lucky, break. Not that this has ever happened to me but this gives the bottles some extra security and my credit card a lot of peace. The way to check this is to get the shelf into the foreground and focus on what shape emerges. Practice at home with bottles so that you know what they look like. You can hear the rising circular shape or a circular shape that has a near uniform pitch indicating a jar/. Stay about half an arm length away from the shelf for best results.
I had the leisure to study packing. Each packet had labels in different fonts and with different font sizes. I don’t know how manufacturers decide the fonts and sizes of labels. However, if any of you are reading this, please use large fonts and keep them standard so that they are machine and human readable. Take the case of a packet that contained “premium almonds;” I was able to read the word “premium” but not the word “almonds.” I suspect this was a font and perhaps a camera placement issue though the word “almonds” was in a large font but Sacheta told me that its styling was different. Small fonts do not help.
If you hear a lot of hard surfaces in the soundscape and or a tropical bird like call, you can be quite certain that you are looking at shelves of packets. If there is space between the hard parts of the soundscapes and you detect a cylinder, then you are looking at shelves of small bottles. You can better experiment with this at shops that sell makeup.
Looking inside the freezers did not yield much information. There were things inside them but I was unable to read their labels and the lighting was variable.

Where is that milkshake?

Once we had finished shopping, we went to Big Chill for beverages and bites. I had ordered a Swiss chocolate milkshake. The waiter placed the glass on the table saying “Swiss chocolate” and vanished. I usually ask someone where the glass is placed. This time, I tilted my head by a few degrees, increased the volume of my bone conduction headset and studied the table to look for that cylinder. I found it and got the glass without mishap. Thanks Dr. Meijer for emphasizing grasping exercises!
Talking about the volume control, it is important hat you can regulate the volume of the soundscapes. An external control is the best for this. Set the vOICe to a volume of 7 or 8 if you are in a noisy environment like a mall and then use the hardware control on the headset to tweak the volume based on your needs.
Finally, if you detect pixelated soundscapes in a shop, it could mean that the lighting is positioned above the shelf or there is a single light source shining down on to the shelf. In this case, get closer to the shelf and do what you can, else ask the staff for help.

Shopping for footwear using synthetic vision

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Sacheta wanted to buy footwear, so there we were, in Kala Niketan, Janpath on a Saturday evening looking for bellies and such. As usual, I was wearing my Vision 800 glasses running the vOICe. One advantage in footwear shopping is that the customer needs to sit to try it. The shop was not too crowded and we did not have a problem in finding a seat. However, before sitting, we looked around the shop, asking the staff for what she wanted. There were shelves packed with footwear. I was unable to understand the shapes until I touched a slipper. It had been stacked on its end such that the strap that comes on the top of your foot was facing the customer. This is different from how shoes are stacked because shoes are kept with their backs to the customer or at least that was the way they were kept the last time I checked.
The shapes were uniform from a far and the shelf boundaries formed hard edges in the scene. The shop had a large range of footwear in several colors. Once I was seated, I began to play with the color filter. Blue, green and red did not yield much feedback. I hit pay dirt when I chose orange. This was strange. I could hear shoppers asking for a colors like “rose gold”, whatever that is. Where was this color? I don’t think anyone wears orange shoes but then what do I know? The analyze option came in really handy. I sat back letting the scan tell me what filters were working. I then enabled the live OCR which introduced a new wrinkle. As I panned, I heard “fresh stock.” Hmm, what could they mean? Were they referring to the latest fashion? Was someone baking shoes? I could not ask Sacheta because she was engaged with a persistent sales person.
Once she had completed her shopping I was able to clear up some of the mysteries. The orange filter worked probably because the shop used a lot of yellow light. The “fresh stock” meant that there was no sale on those items. Don’t ask me why they could not say this up front.
I did have a chance to look at shoes and to distinguish details, my palm remains the best tool. However, with some more practice, I think I will be able to reliably distinguish between shelves full of slippers and shelves where shoes are stacked.
I did not buy anything so did not get a chance to try walking but I can see myself creating a visual landmark of a shelf or something else and walking independently to test shoes.
Some may ask, what is the point of it all? The simple way to buy footwear is to ask for what you want and try until you like something. Yes, this approach works well but my scene reader helped me to get a better idea of what was in the shop and thereby make a more informed choice.

Note

Photography is not allowed in the shop so I did not take any images.

Note 2

Be careful when looking and searching for a place to sit. These shops are full of humans sitting and not paying attention to their surroundings. Stay in the middle of the isle as much as you can. Let the staff guide you to a seat.