[BlindTlk] accessible cable TVs

Thu Mar 18 14:22:55 UTC 2021

Hey Madison, I can vouch for some of what Peter has said. When my husband and I had a TV recently that croaked, a VIZIO, we had to look for something new. We called companies directly and asked questions about their products like especially the accessibility. If the person on the phone insisted not helping us or didn’t seem familiar and refused to let us talk to the supervisor we just cross them off our list. It came down to an LG TV or Samsung. We have enjoyed for the last three months a Samsung 50 inch with speech and it is incredibly awesome! My husband totally blind and set it all up himself even though Samsung said we could call back to get verbal assistance over the phone if we needed it. It is easy to use and it comes with Certain apps but you can always add more. We enjoy watching movies  with to TUBI. It’s free and is accessible though it doesn’t have a descriptive video. We’ve never had good luck with Netflix so we don’t even try anymore. We downloaded the Pluto TV app and it works really good as well. Not all apps have the capability to read and it does State that. I wouldn’t trade our Samsung for anything! It set us back quite a lot of money but everything is so functional compared to the old TV and the TV works much better with our cable box which happens to be spectrum. I don’t know what you have in Canada, but since you’re good at the computer you should do some research, call some companies like we did and put some money aside to get a TV that you can use without help. Before hand I remember just memorizing watch cable stations we’re which numbers and hoping to get it right when I plugged it into the remote. Spectrum works wonderfully, at least at our house anyhow. Wish I could say the same for a LEXA oh the name of the assistant on the Samsung TV remote is called Bixby. We don’t really use it. You speak into the remote and it supposedly does what you asked to do like turn the volume down change channels or something. We are supposed to be able to connect it with Alexa. It did not want to pair but sometimes we have Wi-Fi issues so it may not be the TV etc. it might just be our Wi-Fi connection. It seems to work with everything else but my husbands phone and “her.“

Take care and I’m glad you are asking questions and trying to be more independent.

Can I message you if I have cat behavior questions? I know you love animals. My husband tried guy dogs and had one really great one. The second was useless and has given up on dogs. We go visiting the neighbors dogs instead. Our cat hasn’t expressed jealousy yet but with the summer coming sometime to the Midwest and to you Time will tell.😸

Ericka Nelson

> On Mar 17, 2021, at 10:40 PM, Peter Donahue via BlindTlk <blindtlk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hello Madison,
> 
>    A number of tv models include Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, or
> other voice assistants that will allow you to do exactly what you're needing
> to do. Samsung and Sony have the Google Assistant installed and can be
> activated to allow you to locate channels via the remote or voice input.
> 
>    In addition to various tv models that include voice input and output
> several set-top boxes and tv appliances also include this technology.
> Spectrum's 110 Box has voice output you can activate to select channels, and
> on-demand program although the speech becomes choppy when in the on-demand
> area.
> 
>    Apple's tv appliance, Apple TV via Voiceover and Siri TV allows for
> voice input and output making it easy to find content to hear or view.
> Sony's Play Station includes Google Assistant and Microsoft's Xbox includes
> Windows Narrator. All of these digital assistants have superior voice
> quality and pronunciation and work well though I'm not sure if voice input
> is available on the Xbox. It was at one time but the product that made it
> possible to control the XBox with voice and gestures was discontinued by
> Microsoft. if there is still a way to command the Xbox with voice input and
> output I'll stand corrected
> 
>    There's another outlier that we've had experience with but gets a
> failing grade where the speech quality goes. We had a Sharp TV that included
> the Roku Audio Reader. The speech quality is horrible!I hope the Roku folks
> will improve their products and the quality of its Audio Reader speech. Hope
> you find these suggestions helpful.All the best. 
> 
> Peter Donahue
> 
> 
> 
>    
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindTlk <blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Madison Martin via
> BlindTlk
> Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2021 1:55 PM
> To: blindtlk at nfbnet.org
> Cc: madisonmartin463 at gmail.com
> Subject: [BlindTlk] accessible cable TVs
> 
> Hi all,
> I'm not sure if anything like this exists, but I'm going to ask anyway. Does
> anyone know of any accessible cable TVs? I don't necessary mean one that's
> all voice-activated/controlled, but just  one where you know what's on the
> screen like when you punch in a channel number and it shows what's on that
> channel or when you're going through the TV guide trying to find something
> to watch. I know there's the Amazon Firestick and other such things and
> streaming services, but we'd like to stick with cable. If no one knows of
> any then that's fine I'm simply asking out of curiosity. Thanks for any info
> anyone can provide!!!!!
> Madison 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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