My grandmother was obsessed with jeopardy. Everyone knew: you don’t call Katie between the hours of seven and seven-thirty EST because she would be planted on her balding easy chair, watching The Show. She will not be taking your call.
Unfortunately, my grandmother was losing her sight as well as her hearing, which probably meant the next door neighbors were listening to jeopardy as well.
My grandma Katie, rest her soul, probably would have liked the talking television from Ocean Blue Software, a company based in the UK and Korea. The telly will be able to use text to speech to read programming schedules so viewers (or TV listeners) with failing sight (or no sight at all) can hear what’s going to be on. There is also an option that allows viewers to change fonts–so a person could potentially enlarge fonts used in the guide.
Soon the company says it will also allow a person the ability to change the channels with a simple voice command of “channel up,” “channel down,” or even “volume up.”
Unfortunately, at the moment, the talking television is only available in the UK, but who knows, dear speechheads, who knows.
