AXSChat Podcast

AXSChat Podcast with Anthony Ruck, co-founder and CEO of Aventido

March 29, 2021 Antonio Santos, Debra Ruh, Neil Milliken
AXSChat Podcast
AXSChat Podcast with Anthony Ruck, co-founder and CEO of Aventido
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Show Notes Transcript

 

Antony has been part of the AT industry since 1999, working with manufacturers, publishers, standards organisations and service providers to deliver first class products and customer experience.

In addition to being the co-founder and CEO of Aventido Limited, he has also provided volunteer support for the British Standards Institute, co-created ATEC (the Assistive Technology Exhibition and Conference), been Chair of BATA, and is the first co-Chair of the newly formed DATEurope.

In 2015 Antony was elected Chair of BATA (the British Assistive Technology Association), a UK membership organisation for AT publishers and manufacturers, service providers, the Assessment community, Trainers, AT users, and Blue-Chip organisations. BATA campaigns for the rights and interests of those needing Assistive Technology, working in collaboration with Government departments such as the Cabinet Office, the Home Office, DfE and DWP.

During his tenure at BATA, and recognising the changing commercial and political landscape in Europe, Antony has worked with colleagues from the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy to found DATEurope – a new European association to represent the digital assistive technology industry.

Antony has presented on the advancement of assistive technology and the AT industry at events such as ATIA, BETT, ATEC, OneCPD, ATF Switzerland, and The Workplace Health and Wellbeing Show. 

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Neil Milliken: hello, and welcome to access chat i'm delighted to welcome Anthony rock it's been rather too long in coming i've known Anthony for longer than I would care to mention, I think we both had a lot more hair when we first met.

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Neil Milliken: And we both spent a long time in the assistive technology world and fields, most recently, and he has been working on European projects around assistive tech and prior to that was in charge of the British assistive technology association so.

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Neil Milliken: Welcome Anthony is great to have you here and i'm really keen to hear about your your latest work and what you're doing right now.

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Antony Ruck: Thanks no delighted to be here for so thank you to the south and to Deborah and Antonio for for having me oh.

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Antony Ruck: yeah I think somewhere back in the 90s, we first met so yeah an awful long time ago, but it's all good.

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Antony Ruck: it's been a rollercoaster few years the.

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Antony Ruck: opportunity to work with batter the British assistive technology association came around about eight years ago, when I first went self employed as a consultant.

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Antony Ruck: And I was very honored to be asked to become the Chair of the organization which was kind of intimidating following sort of hot on the heels of Martin and inclusive technologies and Martin mccusker out of text out to sort of.

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Antony Ruck: Very important figures in the industry you've done an awful lot for the sector and I didn't bring the kind of resources and success stories that they brought to the post.

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Antony Ruck: But they've done so much to take better to where it was the mission from there was really to work at how we took it forward that it was a maturing.

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Antony Ruck: organization that needed to find its place in the world and become independent of itself, so it was in a kind way a bit fortuitous to London, the right place at the right time, nothing more, nothing less so so yeah we.

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Antony Ruck: One of the things we became aware of is that when we're having any of these conversations it's very easy to become railroaded and to become a bit of.

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Antony Ruck: A one track conversation, because you keep sort of referring back to what's what's urgent and not looking at the wider picture of what's important so as an organization, we.

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Antony Ruck: We stole the idea from somebody I can remember here, but we still do the idea to split up our workload into what we call special interest groups.

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Antony Ruck: And that's opened up a huge amounts of avenues for us and able to really engage with the membership as well as sort of setting some goals and and some submissions for the organization can take forward as task unfinished projects.

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Antony Ruck: which was great and, as I said, that was reading about saves time I was some sort of initial self employed, and I was.

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Antony Ruck: very, very lucky at that time to sort of spend some time going to events like at eight in Orlando sort of seeing what's going on the the big wide world of assistive technology for anyone who has been to a to a really must go into it's a wonderful event to go to.

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Antony Ruck: A real eye opener we'll sort of.

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Antony Ruck: opportunity to see what else is going on in the world.

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Antony Ruck: um it's one of the meetings there representing batter.

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Antony Ruck: You had a meeting of a lot of representative organizations from around the world, and I was very fortunate to meet chuck called Christophe mueller who represents the that he he in Germany they're kind of the German version of data, representing the assistive technology industry.

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Antony Ruck: And we got talking and the general upshot of it was that you know, the US has great events like a tia and see some and the enabling.

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Antony Ruck: And, and Europe is was very fragmented there was nothing you're sort of pulling all these organizations together and sort of sharing those resources and sharing that that voice.

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Antony Ruck: As somebody said to me recently sort of you know it's much more powerful being part of acquire the lone voice that's kind of how we felt in that industry.

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Antony Ruck: So, working with Christoph over the last couple of years we've ended up pulling together in conjunction with several of the people who contributed she joins an organization called data Europe, which is the digital assistive technology industry Association for Europe.

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Antony Ruck: i'm really the The aim, there is to unites the system technology industry around Europe because.

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Antony Ruck: we're constantly doing the same things we're constantly answering the same questions So what do we get together and i'll answer them once.

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Antony Ruck: Instead of sort of answering them eight times in eight different countries and then doing and get in a couple years later and and also the great practice to say that you know there's a lot of.

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Antony Ruck: Governments that are doing fantastic things to promote assistive technology to promote the accessibility to promote education, promote awareness.

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Antony Ruck: But it's against or siloed so you know, for example in in the UK we've got the disabled students allowance, which is a phenomenal scheme for for supporting students at university non repayable grounds which helps with their technology their training.

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Antony Ruck: And does a huge moment for them as individuals for the colleges, for their.

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Antony Ruck: For their prospects and for the UK economy, so why don't we take great ideas like that and sharing them around Europe, and you know going to the German Government to say, well, this is what that does for.

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Antony Ruck: That trans people in those individuals not economy, why aren't we replicating these things.

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Antony Ruck: And you know, likewise, there are other great schemes or in Europe that if we can pull those together and share those back then, you know we could we can hopefully take the whole continent boards, if not sort of you know, working with other organizations to take the world forward it's.

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Antony Ruck: a wonderful thing.

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it's.

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Neil Milliken: really good to know that we're not reinventing the wheel again or anything intense there is because.

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Neil Milliken: I frequently see me.

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Neil Milliken: And yes, it is really good to bring the industry together, and I think that does need to be some sort of consolidation and and.

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Neil Milliken: rational approach to some of this stuff.

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Neil Milliken: So so that's that's great to see and and it's good to see it also.

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Neil Milliken: Coming from parts of the world that support languages other than English because that's also really massively important so Deborah I see you've got question.

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Debra Ruh: Well, I first of all I applaud going are doing and I, and I agree with Neil.

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Debra Ruh: You know, breaking down the silos coming together so that we can support each other i've been to a tia many times and i've been to see some actually like a tia a lot.

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Debra Ruh: I haven't been there in years, though I haven't been there, in a few years.

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Debra Ruh: But I found that it seemed like the audience had shifted and it was more of our special it from the lens of the US our special educators were coming to it and.

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Debra Ruh: A lot of academia was coming and thank goodness, because I know.

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Debra Ruh: That when my daughter was in school and needed assistive technology, nobody knew what I was talking about the teachers were not trained there.

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Debra Ruh: I think there was one at provider for our entire county and every single school in our county which has a lot of schools and but I, one thing that i'm concerned about with assistive technology is.

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Debra Ruh: It just feels like the, we are not talking about assistive technology we there, there are some assumptions I think sometimes out there that we don't need assistive technology that assistive technology is old and tired and and it just keeps our Community held back.

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Debra Ruh: All you need is is an accessible website you don't need assistive technology and I keep saying.

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Debra Ruh: to people that say that well actually the person has to actually navigate through their computer to get to that website using their assistive technology, and so, and then there's.

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Debra Ruh: References or inferences that mainstream technology can solve all the problems that assistive technology was solving and, by the way.

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Debra Ruh: there's some truth to that there's pieces of the assistive technology that we now are embedded into operating systems and but.

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Debra Ruh: It just feels like the the assistive technology industry is not being included in a lot of these conversations you mentioned accessibility, we talked about disability inclusion, but.

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Debra Ruh: There seems to not be a lot of supportive the industry or understanding why we need to support it, much less than getting into the complications, you were talking about and that the silos and.

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Debra Ruh: we're better than being acquired than one voice, I know i'm throwing a lot at you, but i'm actually very concerned about these things I just because I believe we still do need assistive technology and yet is being attacked it's being attacked and saying we don't need it so.

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Antony Ruck: wholeheartedly agree, I think.

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Antony Ruck: The.

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Antony Ruck: Absolute essence of everything that the sort of the IT industry does is read the individual and the way that the individual accesses their computer the world's they're.

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Antony Ruck: Going shopping getting out it's got to be based around the individual, there is no one size fits all there is no sort of policy or a product that says, you know we have.

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Antony Ruck: The answer to all of your needs it doesn't happen and sometimes that requires a combination of products, sometimes it requires one product to be customized to that individual.

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Antony Ruck: that there are so many ways of sort of you know.

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Antony Ruck: Supporting the individual in that process, and one of the things I suppose from the industry's point of view is that we probably haven't sort of you know 10 1520 years ago we weren't great at coming together to solve problems, we were all doing it individually.

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Antony Ruck: And then i'm saying i've got the best one that has been a sort of shifted mentality in recent years and there is much more.

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Antony Ruck: of an ecosystem that has joined up and looking to share the the technologies and the IP and the way that these things are adapted and also to promote the different options.

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Antony Ruck: You know, things that you know batter and Europe look to do is to make sure that everybody is aware of all the things that are out there.

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Antony Ruck: And then you know, again, that is, you know working in a world where resources are scarce, you know, but nobody can sort of.

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Antony Ruck: have unlimited resources to complete reinventing the wheel every time or carrying.

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Antony Ruck: The same piece of research that everyone else has that every time if we can share that information to share that learning share the failures.

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Antony Ruck: You know if it didn't work let's let's not be shy about that it didn't work let's learn from it, but yeah the one of the significant changes really I think in assistive technology.

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Antony Ruck: Was was when the the big IT companies went from supporting the ecosystem to sort of taking over the ecosystem and messaging change from we're supporting you to we can do all of it ourselves, you don't need those bets we've got all.

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Antony Ruck: That is is a dangerous message oh.

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Neil Milliken: I was wanted to come in and comment on, and I think that.

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Neil Milliken: there's definitely been a shift and there has been that sort of.

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Neil Milliken: message that you know we've got all the answers and I don't think.

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Neil Milliken: Anyone has all of the answers at the same time, I still applaud the.

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Neil Milliken: The widening of access the free.

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Neil Milliken: tools have have have enabled right so, so I think that the one of the charges laid at the feet of the assistive tech industry has been that the software is really expensive yeah and you know you and I, having worked in the industry, we know that some of that is down to the fact that.

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Neil Milliken: It costs money to develop and if you're not selling it too many people that cost is spread over a you know cut into you know bigger chunks of you know you have to pay for a bigger slice of the cake.

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Neil Milliken: But the also the way that other technology industries licensed their components to this assistive tech industry.

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Neil Milliken: inflated the prices, too, so, for example, if your licensing a text to speech voice for a game you pay one price if your licensing it for.

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Neil Milliken: piece of assistive tech you pay something far more.

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Neil Milliken: And so the the whole sort of supply chain and ecosystem also pushes up the price of assistive tech so.

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Neil Milliken: There are a number of factors at play there and i'm and i'm not saying that some of the assistive technology companies haven't.

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Neil Milliken: You know, got away with very high prices for quite a long period of time, because I think some of them bit.

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Neil Milliken: But at the same time, you know, there is a cost of making this stuff and there is a cost of maintaining this stuff and if, and certainly for some specific disabilities it's never going to be mainstream and and therefore.

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Neil Milliken: there's there has to be a price pain development done on this stuff so therefore there is a need and yeah and it will be expensive, but at the same time.

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Neil Milliken: Society should be subsidizing that there needs to be ways of of making this stuff available, so I think that there's still issues to resolve around how we give people access to the tools, how we fund the R amp D, etc.

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Neil Milliken: But.

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Neil Milliken: there's room for everyone to play and and i'm sure Antonia has a point right, so I know continuous point as well, but i'm gonna come back to this other stuff as well around interoperability and so on, and that's that's a huge issue and it is an area that spend a lot of time on.

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Antonio Santos: Now, with no with everyone working from home and no particular, particularly the case of schools deters know students, working from home.

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Antonio Santos: we've seen that in in some parts of the world teachers were on their own searching for technology trying to help the teachers, the best way they could.

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Antonio Santos: And I was able to see that some vendors were able to jump and try to support the teacher and tell them well, we can you know we have this solution here, you can use our free new.

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Antonio Santos: software and all your needs for your students are soft lockers are can enter the arkadin We saw how can we improve the br.

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Antonio Santos: of assistive tech How can people working as assistant assistive tech better respond to the needs of the users, because some of the of the commercial vendors, are doing that.

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Antonio Santos: And somehow in some cases competing with assistive tech our can assistive tech be more willing to listen and react on the needs of the users.

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Antony Ruck: Of fabulous questions I have to say i've sort of completely by coincidence, this morning I was at a meeting with the Department of Education here in the UK.

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Antony Ruck: And they've just reintroduced there at experts panel, I was phenomenal names from the UK sector in there.

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Antony Ruck: And look at it exactly that's what is the method by which teachers understand what at is available, I think it's sticky highlighted sort of over the over the lockdown and over the pandemic and lovely that but still with us, for the time being.

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Antony Ruck: But yeah you know that, where is the trusted source, you can go to this impartial that will give you the advice you need the will have other teachers commenting whether this was a great resource resource.

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Antony Ruck: That also feedbacks into the loop of the industry and says, you know okay your license for your software was for us to use for five kids in school, but they've all gone home, we can you know.

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Antony Ruck: Access to now, but my teacher still needs the license can find information.

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Antony Ruck: And i've got to say I think genuinely the the publishers that that I worked with did a fantastic job of amending the licensing immediately and just say look guys.

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Antony Ruck: If you want to take a moment to take it, if you want additional licenses that you're to be teachers, they are for the parents and they put on a lot of online resources at the time.

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Antony Ruck: to train parents to do their best to become teachers and i've got two young boys i'm new teacher i've got to say that.

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Antony Ruck: Though i'm definitely not one of those teachers, I was ultimately a challenge and but but.

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Antony Ruck: It was amazing sort of the resources that came into the industry at the time, for which I absolutely take my hat off and.

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Antony Ruck: It was a great lesson for us as a sector and where we can come together and share that look those there's a need, how do we react and react quickly.

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Antony Ruck: And for that I absolutely applaud all the players in the industry for coming together quickly to pick up neil's points around pricing as well.

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Antony Ruck: That you know that the it is expensive to deliver to develop assistive technology, you know i'm currently working through the development piece of software, with the clients and it, you know it's already stretching into the the hundreds of thousands of pounds.

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Antony Ruck: So when you start to sort of look at your business model to recoup that.

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Antony Ruck: That becomes a challenge, again, frankly, so that we have something called the the innovate UK grant system which is.

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Antony Ruck: You know, great government from the ground that's contributes to the research and development of new technologies and lovely very keen to do that, in the wake of the covert pandemic but yeah, it is a challenge, and how.

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Antony Ruck: We negotiate with the big it post to say license your technologies to us at a more affordable rates, and this is the benefit to you and with us, you know reciprocal agreements or you know publicity how that works.

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Antony Ruck: That there are ways of doing it, and I think it takes me kind of back to the start of this, we can do it as a group incredibly difficult to do it as an individual.

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Debra Ruh: agree and I saw that I know that we saw a lot of problems with once again.

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Debra Ruh: Constantly prices, an issue it's an issue, and I know that we're all fans of David beans and we've had David baines on here before I loved when David baines was working with Mata in Qatar and.

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Debra Ruh: They paid the at provider some of the at providers to create their products in Arabic and then, in return, they would get licensing of those products so that's another huge issue that we have is making sure it is available in the native languages, but.

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Debra Ruh: But then, making sure that the individuals that use the assistive technology have access to it, whether they're working from home or they're at school or they're at the office or wherever.

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Debra Ruh: It continues to be a confusion and a problem and, and I think also I think 18 needs to be rebranded.

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Debra Ruh: Because I think people are very confused about what we're even talking about often hear it because I hear people saying, nobody uses at anymore, and I.

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Debra Ruh: I know that's not true, I would ask, Neil if that's true since he uses it all day long to do his job, so I I there seems to be confusion, I remember in the past, we used to call it adaptive technology.

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Debra Ruh: And I don't know if we still call it adaptive technology in some places, but.

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Debra Ruh: I it just feels like somehow assistive technologies become the redheaded stepchild has I don't know where that saying came from, but hopefully it's not racist against anybody, but.

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Debra Ruh: It just seems to that I don't see the at providers and experts being included in the other conversations I remember being so frustrated when we would be talking about disability inclusion from the employment lens.

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Debra Ruh: And nobody was talking about accessibility and I remember just going crazy in the state saying wait a minute wait a minute.

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Debra Ruh: If we don't bring accessibility into this, you know we're going to continue to be, excluding people with disabilities but.

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Debra Ruh: Somehow as we've walked this path we have the big technology people in whoo we have accessibility, we have the corporations and thanks to people like your wife Lucy rock with bdnf and our lovely Dr Caroline Casey of the valuable 500.

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Debra Ruh: But I don't see the 80 experts being invited to these conversations I often will invite David beans just because he's.

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Debra Ruh: Amazingly brilliant now that I know about you Anthony yay good to know about that, but.

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Debra Ruh: He what he did to you or Neil know why what happened, why are we not would happen when did he come visible and not needed and but it might be only one that I i'm very.

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Debra Ruh: very concerned about this and we're not supporting the entrepreneurs So what did was there, something that happened to causes or just a series of.

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Neil Milliken: Oh, I think there's a few things at play here.

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Neil Milliken: So I mean there are other people in there, so I think some of it got subsumed into accessibility.

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Neil Milliken: Right um so a lot of us, you know my my job title isn't i'm an assistive technologies right that's where.

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Neil Milliken: I started my career along this path, was playing with assistive tech and speech recognition and building computers that worked with it, because it was pretty flaky and I worked with another assistive technologies that you will recognize the name of having James.

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Neil Milliken: And yeah she's an accessibility expert now so so, but the thing is accessibility.

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Neil Milliken: requires working with assistive tech and that's about this is the interoperability piece right so so whilst there are.

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Neil Milliken: assistive features in mainstream products they don't have the same capabilities as the specialist assistive tech yeah because they're they're kind of fragmented and siloed.

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Neil Milliken: And, and so that has an impact on on end users and and so you say I use assistive tech all day and I do I use a mixture of my specialist assistive tech, so the dragon speech recognition and.

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Neil Milliken: I use the Microsoft stuff, the reason I switched between the two is is quite simply that dragon is really processor and Ram hungry and can slow my computer down.

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Neil Milliken: And if I just want to dictate a few lines, then i'll press the button that's already in office, but at the same time I don't have the same kind of.

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Neil Milliken: Quality of control, so I have to do manual corrections and it hasn't learned my my vocabulary, in the same way that the dragon has, but if I just want to do something quickly i'll use the inbuilt stuff.

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Neil Milliken: But, equally, I can't use that inbuilt stuff outside of that particular ecosystem, so if I want to go, and you know use dictation in some of my company software.

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Neil Milliken: What we call our line of business Apps it doesn't work.

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Neil Milliken: So, then, I have to go to dragon and then even dragon can be a bit flaky and that's where the accessibility piece comes in, because you've got to work on.

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Neil Milliken: The interoperability between the assistive technologies in the mainstream tech so so there's there's more play so it's more there's more than just a name to it, I think that the the the.

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Neil Milliken: The the assistive features are great that we need them it's the an argue with the heck time in terms of this world, whether it's at 20 2010 that they're the sort of mass market sort of.

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Neil Milliken: tasters, but if you really need it, you need something which is.

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Neil Milliken: Much more sort of heavy duty feature rich robust.

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Neil Milliken: To be able to do what you need to do yeah.

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Antony Ruck: No you're right you're right, I think you know when it comes to things like marketing budgets, no matter what the messaging is.

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Antony Ruck: Some marketing is is ubiquitous it's everywhere, you know you use any social media use any website you'll get the updates popping up.

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Antony Ruck: Talking about mainstream media and mainstream technologies and you won't get that, in the same way.

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Antony Ruck: You know, for a lot of the assistive technology products, so I think that that the awareness of assistive technology dropped.

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Antony Ruck: I don't think there were there was a period where assistive technology wasn't wasn't sexy, you know you had ipads suddenly appeared on the scene and wow you know I can zoom I can pinch, I can do this, you know, and that that was cool i'd be wanted to be seen, with an iPad.

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Antony Ruck: And that kind of took things way, but then I think we were coming back the other way, because I think that that customization piece.

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Antony Ruck: And the ability for somebody who's a trainer a practitioner to go i've got a good idea and i'm going to develop an APP that does this because there's a niche there are people that aren't being catered for.

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Antony Ruck: Its enable that to happen now, and I think sort of it is coming back, and I think people are sort of.

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Antony Ruck: professionalising those products more you know a lot of the user interfaces weren't that's pretty they looked a little bit like something I might design.

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Antony Ruck: Whereas in a know sort of you know we're at a stage where.

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Antony Ruck: You know people coming together in there they're able to do much better design graphics and then the sort of things that are acceptable in the workplace, for example in university they're acceptable that things you want to use at home.

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Antony Ruck: You know.

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Antony Ruck: There was also, I think a degree of what you were promised them what you got that didn't quite match, so I look 20 years ago when I first saw dragon being.

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Antony Ruck: demonstrated and it looked amazing and I tried to use it and it was not very good.

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Antony Ruck: That was the polite version now dragon has met that expectation and you use it now and it's phenomenal products you're right Neil every so often you'll get your flaky moments with it.

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Antony Ruck: And it will type up some drivers, but that means that 99.9% of the time it's a phenomenal tool and I think as that develops and that increases, and I think we start.

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Antony Ruck: to mainstream those assistive technologies so they're not seen as being the thing that stands out they're becoming productivity tools as well.

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Antony Ruck: I think you know we're all you know, using my mapping we're using speech to text we're all using those solutions that help us with our work and improve spell check is don't just.

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Antony Ruck: Do squiggly lines they actually you know working through a process to find the right word build your vocabulary there's a lot of very clever stuff that's coming through, and I think we just need to raise the awareness it's still being there.

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Neil Milliken: So so.

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Neil Milliken: pleased that you want it to.

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Neil Milliken: us is that the.

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Neil Milliken: With this.

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Antonio Santos: Today they are, they are know we could call it incentives that we didn't have in the past for also we have a regulation, for example in Europe.

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Antonio Santos: That know where governments need to have need to follow accessibility guidelines and Apps and systems with the inside government for employees need to be accessible so is the the in the accessibility technology industry, taking the opportunity to to leverage this changes.

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Antony Ruck: Oh, trying to yes.

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Antony Ruck: You know I said, the challenge has been, you know that you're representing sort of been really an existence for a few months now.

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Antony Ruck: And the difficulty has been sort of coming together as a big enough body in the sort of you know, an impartial body as well.

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Antony Ruck: You know it's it's very, very easy for any organization to be overcome by you know one or two players are very vocal and that have big budgets.

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Antony Ruck: and take off in that direction, rather than sort of going for a consensus voice.

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Antony Ruck: Which is something that you know, hopefully with butter and with that Europe we've managed to do and that's, then you know, as I mentioned that the meeting with the Department of Education this morning.

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Antony Ruck: it's because we're becoming a trusted advisor trusted friend that we're being invited into those conversations, so that accessibility and assistive technology, be considered at inception conception, whatever it may be.

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Antony Ruck: But that is so much easier and so much more effective than waiting until the project's been delivered and then going oh yeah we've got about 10% of the population.

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Antony Ruck: by which time it costs a fortune is really hard to do so, so yeah that there is a shift in sort of you know, we are being brought in at the the early stages of advising and being trusted to give that impartial advice, not always you know.

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Antony Ruck: But, but the majority of the time that is now happening it's great to see.

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Neil Milliken: You and I think that this is, this is one of the challenges that I constantly have is.

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Neil Milliken: Even with accessibility is the conversations, because I am when we talk about inclusion a lot and I and my job also.

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Neil Milliken: has an element where we talk about digital inclusion which is wider right and some of the built in tools.

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Neil Milliken: Help inclusion, but but there's also the connectivity there's the social factors and all of this, but then, when I talk to people that are specifically in the digital inclusion community.

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Neil Milliken: You know what they've I frequently had conversations that we have well we're going to do the accessibility bit later, you know because that's really quite hard.

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Neil Milliken: To the wrong way round here, you know you did you do that first yeah.

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Neil Milliken: yeah it comes easier.

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Antony Ruck: yeah it's cheaper and more effective to do that this is way more.

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Neil Milliken: yeah but but but yeah it's it's sometimes it's perceived as too hard, so you know we're just gonna put that to one side and it's like yeah but that's the bit that really needs you most of you really cared about inclusion you'd be doing that first.

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Antony Ruck: delivery to do you agree.

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Neil Milliken: Yes, so but.

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Neil Milliken: So with this combination of you know, bringing together of the assistive tech industry, one of the.

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Neil Milliken: And you talked about sort of finding those interesting niches that are not being so So what are the things that you think you know exciting and what are the niches that you think are going to be productive for the at industry and also it transformative for their customers.

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Antony Ruck: Think there's a.

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Antony Ruck: wide ranging question but a brilliant one I think you know, obviously artificial intelligence is is making systems smarter and that they're predicting you know the needs of the user so.

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Antony Ruck: Examples escaping the moment we get a, but when you get home and everything has been sort of warmed up got ready, you know your routine is known by your environments.

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Antony Ruck: But you know and to be able to sort of anticipate your needs the way that things are more interconnected makes your life much easier.

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Antony Ruck: When I was working with.

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Antony Ruck: Products it's a predictive texting solution does do great stuff.

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Antony Ruck: One of the things it does just simplifies keystroke inputs, so you know it's predicted multiple words in advance, it takes if you're writing an email, it takes the name of the person.

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Antony Ruck: From the email address and automatically says, but he wrote dear it's taking the name of the individual, and it means that you're being effective to being consistent you're being you know you're minimizing your keystrokes and your your your efforts, which is great for everybody.

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Antony Ruck: So I think you know artificial intelligence and smarter systems are going to make a huge difference, I think, mental health is a big one, I think that by giving.

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Antony Ruck: Experts availability and access to smarter systems that have a tiered approach to support and intervention is going to prove to be a huge benefits too many people.

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Antony Ruck: You know, for the fact that you know, depending on what level of support you need at any one stage, you can sort of work with that system, you know who your trusted sort of people are you can reach out to.

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Antony Ruck: Or if it goes further than that, and you meet you know purge crisis moments that there is a trusted network that you can reach out that moments of crisis, not sort of you know, the next day, the next month or next year, when you have a referral or whatever it is through your sort of.

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Antony Ruck: systems, so I think you know that sort of inclusive city and that sort of connectivity, the fact that you know we can have these conversations across the world.

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Antony Ruck: You know, I think it speaks volumes for for what we can achieve, and I think you know through rates, the pandemic people have looked a lot to assistive technologies and how.

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Antony Ruck: They can help the individual in their own environment is making a huge difference, I think, obviously getting everything you've got going on with home automation.

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Antony Ruck: You know the smarter homes, is going to be fantastic we've been forwards and how we continue to work with our computers I we interact with them as we speak to them, or they speak to us, I mean that sort of universally is going to be a great journey I think there's gonna be fantastic.

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Neil Milliken: So i'm.

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Neil Milliken: Having been shouting at computers for a very long time now, you know, several decades.

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Neil Milliken: i'm still fascinated by speech technology but i'm also very much aware of the limitations, once you get out of the English language.

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Neil Milliken: or once.

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Neil Milliken: You get non non native speakers trying to use speech tech so so my wife swears that siri is both racist and sexist.

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Neil Milliken: Because she's from Southeast Asia and it.

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Neil Milliken: Is.

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Neil Milliken: Just doesn't respond to her in the same way that it responds to me now part of that will be my my standard accent because it's expecting UK English part of it will be because i've been talking to computers for for 20 plus years so so know how to trigger them.

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Neil Milliken: But but it's it's, it is definitely a challenge, so I think that you know, there are, and then, when we think about you know with disability quite often the there's additional challenges around the.

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Neil Milliken: The slurred speech or input unusual accents you know you've got you've got their.

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Neil Milliken: Work starting right now on building voice models for for death speech so so because, because if you were born deaf you you speak slightly differently, because you can't hear so you don't mimic in the same way, so and then again for speech impediments and so on, so.

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Neil Milliken: yeah there's areas there that I think you know still require some significant work yeah.

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Antony Ruck: yeah there are, I think sort of you know we're still sort of perfecting our interface on we I think you know we.

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Antony Ruck: were just talking last week about.

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Antony Ruck: The Amazon echoes and at one time that was that was proper science fiction, I was proper tomorrow's world.

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Antony Ruck: I never sort of getting used to that, but we're still not using natural language when we're sort of communicating.

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Antony Ruck: And if we don't remember all the right terms the rights commands it still doesn't do quite what we wanted to do and does all manner of strange and wonderful things.

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Antony Ruck: And that's true, of course, all the sort of the voice activated system so they're kind of going in the right direction but that's the smarter artificial intelligence systems will hopefully enable us to do an awful lot more, I mean non English language stuff is is lacking on that.

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yeah.

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Neil Milliken: i'm aware that we already gap even Apollo 13 minutes, I mean one last point on on on the this this smart home stuff before we before we go and is is.

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Neil Milliken: Again, interoperability, because what we've got at the moment is walled gardens, so you know your your siri won't talk to you, your alexa won't talk to your cortana and actually you know it, you know we want.

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Neil Milliken: people to be able to have consumer choice, we want people to be in so, for example, I really like ios devices, but I don't like.

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Neil Milliken: apple MACs very much because the operating systems, different, and I use windows for my main PC and it would be nice to have one voices system that worked across both so those kinds of things are a barrier in themselves.

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Neil Milliken: But.

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Neil Milliken: it's still better than it was and we don't need to celebrate and we still need to thank the people that have invented the assistive tech and encourage the next generation so thinking and thanking people.

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Neil Milliken: I need to thank Barclays access for continuing to support us my clear text for continuing to keep us captioned micro link for also helping keep the lights on and thank you Anthony for the work that you're doing to support the assistive tech industry.

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Antony Ruck: My pleasure absolutely honored to be here chatting you guys today is it's a real pleasure.

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Antony Ruck: You know illustrious company, so thank you very much thank you.