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Your weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Show Notes: Anna Leung – AT Specialist at Easter Seals Crossroads
How to Use Siri – Full list of Siri Commands for iPhone, iPad, Video http://bit.ly/1eRzcat
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—–transcript follows—–
ANNA LEUNG: Hi, this is Anna Leung, and I’m in assistive technology specialist on our iPad grant at Easter Seals Crossroads, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.
WADE WINGLER: Hi, this is Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana with your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up-to-date on the latest developments in the field of technology, designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs. Welcome to episode number 152 of Assistive Technology Update. It’s scheduled to be released on April 25 of 2014.
I am out of the office and unavailable today but have a special episode coming to you today. It’s called a day in the life with Siri.
If you’re looking for show resources or show notes, check our website at eastersealstech.com. If you have questions or comments, please call our listener line at 317-721-7124 or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAproject.
I have a long commute, and I’m a very mobile professional, and I find myself using Siri a lot more than I used to so that while I’m at stop lights and things, I can dictate messages, I can have it read some things to me, but I’m only using it a little bit. I’m not using it to its full potential. I know that, and so I have invited by friend and colleague, Anna Leung, into my studio today. We’re going to talk about how Siri can be used to more of its potential to a little greater extent. So before we jump into the Siri part of the conversation. Anna, how are you this morning?
ANNA LEUNG: Good, how are you?
WADE WINGLER: Good. Thank you so much for coming in a little early today so that we can get this interview taken care of before you go and see the folks that you’re planning and seeing today. Tell us a little bit about what you do here at Easter Seals crossroads.
ANNA LEUNG: I am an assistive technology specialist at the Assistive Technology Center. Right now I’m working on an iPad grant program which mainly to test whether we can use iPads to help people who are 55 or older and to have blindness or vision impairments to improve their independent living activities.
WADE WINGLER: So for you, every day, you are hanging out with folks who are a little bit older. They are 55 years or older, visually impaired or blind, and you’re teaching them to use an iPad for all kinds of stuff. A lot of independent testing skills, sometimes things related to education or employment. Just how to use that kind of technology to be more independent. And it’s a serious part of that, right?
ANNA LEUNG: Yes.
WADE WINGLER: So we thought about this a little bit, and you came up with a great idea of kind of giving us an imaginary day in the life with Siri and how you might use you to do some things.
ANNA LEUNG: Yes. I am going to give you a rundown about what I’m going to do with Siri from the time I wake up in the morning to the time that I plan my day. So, I’m going to use my iPhone to turn on Siri. The first thing I usually check in the morning is the weatherWhat is the weather forecast?
SIRI: Here’s the forecast between today and Monday.
ANNA LEUNG: Read me the weather for today.
SIRI: Looks like nice weather coming up today. Up to 54 degrees Fahrenheit.
ANNA LEUNG: Very good. So then I usually check the schedules of different sports teams like, read to me the latest MLS schedules.
SIRI: Here is the MLS schedule for week seven. At 7:30 PM, the Red Bulls played the Union. And on Saturday, the Union will take on the Dynamo. The Fire will play the Revolution. The Rapids will face the Earthquakes.
ANNA LEUNG: Okay. I have an idea. What about movies? What movies are playing today?
SIRI: Okay, let me look. I found quite a number of movies playing today.
ANNA LEUNG: Okay. How about Frozen? What theater in Indianapolis is playing Frozen?
SIRI: Here is Frozen playing today here in Indianapolis.
ANNA LEUNG: Okay. So Frozen is playing around noon time, so maybe I’ll get on one of those. It’s still too early. I think I’m going to go back to sleep. How about if I set up my alarm just to make sure that I will wake up on time do my oil change appointment, do my dinner and all that. So I’m going to ask Siri to set up the alarm. Wake me up at 10:30 AM.
SIRI: Your alarm set for 10:30 AM.
ANNA LEUNG: Thank you. Oh, before I go back to sleep, I have to schedule my oil change. Schedule in oil change appointment today at 2 PM.
SIRI: Okay, I can create your meeting. Know that you already have two appointments that overlap with this. Shall I schedule it anyway?
ANNA LEUNG: Yes.
SIRI: I scheduled your event for 2 PM today.
ANNA LEUNG: Schedule dinner appointment at 7 PM tonight.
SIRI: Okay, I can create your meeting. Note that you are to have an all-day appointment for today.
ANNA LEUNG: Yes.
SIRI: Shall I schedule it anyway?
ANNA LEUNG: Yes.
SIRI: I don’t understand “es.” Change time, title.
ANNA LEUNG: Change time.
SIRI: Okay, Anna, what’s the new time for this meeting?
ANNA LEUNG: 6:30.
SIRI: Okay, I can create your meeting. Note the you already have an all-day appointment for today. Shall I schedule it anyway?
ANNA LEUNG: Yes.
SIRI: Your event is scheduled for 6:30 PM today.
ANNA LEUNG: Okay, before the dinner appointment, I think I need to come up with a dinner plate. I think I want to look up a green bean casserole recipe. Let me check. Read me the green bean casserole recipe.
SIRI: Let me think about that. Okay, I found this on the web.
ANNA LEUNG: Okay. I will check that out. And then I realize that I need to pick up some groceries to prepare for the green bean casserole. I’m going to make a note for myself. Note that I will need to buy mushroom soup, green beans, cheddar, French fried onions, and milk.
SIRI: I didn’t find any notes matching “I will need to buy mushroom soup, green beans, cheddar , French fried onions, and milk.”
ANNA LEUNG: Let me try that again. Note for me to buy much of soup, green beans, French fried onions, and milk.
SIRI: You don’t have any notes matching that.
ANNA LEUNG: Okay, scratch that. Let me just create a reminder. Remind me to pick up mushroom soup, green beans, french fries, and milk today at 3 PM.
SIRI: Here’s a reminder for today at 3 PM. Shall I create it?
ANNA LEUNG: Yes.
SIRI: Okay, I’ll remind you.
ANNA LEUNG: Okay. I will need to set aside some money to pick up the groceries. How about I have to buy three cartons of milk. How much do I have to bring with me? Let me use Siri to calculate that. What is 1.5 multiplied by three.
SIRI: Let me have a look. It looks like the answer is 4.5.
ANNA LEUNG: I think I’ll also need to shop for a Panasonic mixer. Let me check. Read me the price of a Panasonic mixer.
SIRI: There’s nothing to read.
ANNA LEUNG: Can you find the price of a Panasonic mixer?
SIRI: You sound very capable.
[Laughter]WADE WINGLER: Did Siri just tell you, “No, I don’t want to do that”?
ANNA LEUNG: That’s fine. I will just go ahead and go to the web to find that out. Now I have a list of items I want to buy from Amazon. I need to find out how much I will pay at the end. Let me calculate that. What is the sum of 27 plus 5.88 plus 300 plus 35.67?
SIRI: It looks like the answer is 368.55.
ANNA LEUNG: Thank you. Now, I think I’m ready to put the ingredients into the oven, but how am I going to use it when my oven’s timer is broken? Let me use Siri to check that out and see whether I can set up a timer. Start a timer for 15 minutes.
SIRI: Okay, 15 minutes and counting.
ANNA LEUNG: I guess it works. I will have a very busy day today. I don’t think I have time to do my oil change. Let me remove that oil change appointment. Remove the oil change appointment.
SIRI: I don’t see any appointments for “all change.”
ANNA LEUNG: Let me try that again. Remove the oil change appointment at 2 PM.
SIRI: I didn’t find any appointments about “all change” at 2 PM.
ANNA LEUNG: Let me try one more time. Remove the oil change appointment at 2 PM.
SIRI: I didn’t find any appointments about “auto remove the island change at 2 PM.”
ANNA LEUNG: Okay, sometimes Siri is finicky. How about this? Remove the appointment at 2 PM.
SIRI: Shall I remove this from your calendar?
ANNA LEUNG: Yes.
SIRI: It’s off your calendar.
ANNA LEUNG: Thank you. I think I need to tell my husband about the dinner tonight. Let me email him. Email Brian Richards.
SIRI: Which email address for Brian Richards?
ANNA LEUNG: @yahoo.com
SIRI: What’s the subject of your email?
ANNA LEUNG: Dinner.
SIRI: Okay. What would you like the email to say?
ANNA LEUNG: Would you like to have dinner with me tonight at 7 PM?
SIRI: Okay, Anna, here’s your email message to Brian Richards. Are you ready to send it?
ANNA LEUNG: Yes.
SIRI: Okay. I’ll send it.
ANNA LEUNG: All right. I think I don’t want to talk anymore. I’m ready to go back to sleep. Let me find out the closest Indian restaurant. Where is the closest Indian restaurant?
SIRI: I found five Indian restaurants fairly close to. I’ve sorted them by distance.
ANNA LEUNG: How do I get to Shalimar?
SIRI: Sorry, I don’t see Shalimar in your contacts. Can you try again?
ANNA LEUNG: How do I get to Shalimar in Indianapolis?
SIRI: I could not find any places matching “Chari Morrow.”
ANNA LEUNG: How do I get to the closest Indian restaurant in Indianapolis?
SIRI: Getting directions to Shalimar.
WADE WINGLER: Which is a great Indian restaurant by the way.
[Laughter]SIRI: Starting route to Shalimar. Head north on North Keystone Ave.
ANNA LEUNG: There we go. Okay, I’m ready to go back to sleep. That’s it. That’s how I would use Siri throughout the day to plan ahead.
WADE WINGLER: And I think that’s amazing. Thank you so much for doing that. I think that’s a really great way to look at some real-world applications for something like Siri.
Question. There are times when you are getting visual responses back from Siri. It didn’t read everything. That’s one of the things that I have realized. Some things have voice feedback and something’s rely on the screen. Do you find because the folks you work with are primarily blind or visually impaired that that is a barrier to using Siri, because it doesn’t read everything, or do you also use a combination of Siri and voice over to get some of that information?
ANNA LEUNG: Oh, yes, absolutely. I usually ask them to turn on voiceover before they turn on Siri so that they can also make voice over read whatever is on the screen. Or they should use the verb “read” me the appointments or “read” me the schedules. Then Siri will read everything to you.
WADE WINGLER: Excellent. And if someone like me has used Siri for a couple of basic things. I usually just use it to dictate when I’m writing messages, text, or emails. What advice would you have for them to learn more about Siri and to get where they could use it throughout their day like you just demonstrated?
ANNA LEUNG: I think they should just keep trying. Ask Siri as many questions as possible. It’s also important to be direct, concise, and precise. Sometimes if you say too much, it will confuse Siri. It’s always better to think ahead before you ask Siri. Sometimes you need to just say the verb right away to get the action going.
Also one quick tip about the latest iOS update, 7.1. Now you can press and hold the home button so that you can think a little bit, pause a little bit, and then finish your sentence come and then you release a finger, then Siri will start processing your command. So that you can buy more time. Because sometimes when you start talking to Siri and your mind might go blank and you don’t know what to say, but if you leave your finger on the home button, then you can have more time.
WADE WINGLER: Excellent. Any other words of wisdom about Siri, how folks might be more independence in using this tool?
ANNA LEUNG: Just try to ask Siri as many questions as possible. Siri is very interactive, not only planning your days, but you can also ask Siri all kinds of fun questions. You’ll get a lot of answers. I’m sure a lot of people have been playing with it.
WADE WINGLER: I’m glad that during the demonstration, not everything went absolutely perfectly. I certainly could go back and edit those things out, but I won’t, because I think it’s important to realize that it’s a tool, but like all kinds of tools there are times where does a perfect jobs and there’s times when you have to work at it a little bit.
ANNA LEUNG: Absolutely.
WADE WINGLER: Right. Anna Leung is one of our assistive technology specialists here and is on our iPad grant and spends her day with iOS devices. Anna, thank you so much for being with us today.
ANNA LEUNG: Sure, no problem.
[Music]WADE WINGLER: I thought it was pretty fascinating to hear Anna you Siri in the context of a day in the life situation. I wanted to go in and give users even more Siri commands that I think might be helpful. I’m going to be looking at a website here called techblog.tv. It has a fairly up to date list. It says it’s a full list of Siri commands for the iPhone and iPad. They come into categories, so I’m going to give you a few different commands in these categories to give you an idea of some of the things that are available.
We’ll start with some of the more system related sort of things like contacts. You can say things like “What’s Michael’s address?” Or “What is Susan Park’s phone number?” You can say “When is my wife’s birthday?” Or “Who is Michael Manning?” And it might look up in your contacts and find people like that.
It also has the ability to know about relationships so that you can say in this example “My mom is Susan Park,” and it will look in your contacts and make that connection so that later you can say, text my mom or send a message to my mom, and it would already know that your mom is Susan Park. You can also then, once you have those relationships set up, say things like “Call my brother at work,” and it will look him up and contacts, look for the work phone number and go ahead and do that.
Anna spent some time talking about calendar. Some of the commands that are available are “Set up a meeting at 9, ″ or “Set up a meeting with Anna at 9.” You can also say things like, “Schedule a meeting at 830 today in the boardroom,” and it would put it on your calendar. It would probably assume 8:30 AM and it would set the location to boardroom so that you would have that information available as well. You can modify appointments. You can say, “Cancel the budget review meeting,” or, “Reschedule my appointment with Dr. Manning to next Monday at 9 AM,” or you can ask questions like, “Where is my next meeting,” “When is my next meeting,” “What’s on my calendar for Friday” or “When am I meeting with Anna.”
These functions, by the way, I updated for iOS 7 so the stuff we’re talking about works on the most recent release of iOS. Some things related to time. You can say, “Wake me up tomorrow at 7am,” or you can say, “wake me in at half an hour.” And it will wake you up if you’re going to take a quick. You can say, “What’s today’s date” “What’s the date this Saturday” “What time is it in Chicago”
You can also use Siri to set the timer. You can say, “Set the timer for 10 minutes.” Show the timer, pause the timer, resume, reset, or stop the timer. Those are all things you can do with Siri as well. You can send email messages and text messages. If you’re going to send an email, and you’re working with somebody who is listed in your contacts, you can say, “Send an email to Anna about” Anna would be the person, the about would be the subject. So you can say, “Send an email to Anna about our meeting,” and it would address the message to Anna, put our meeting in the subject line come and then it would go ahead and ask you to dictate your message. When you’re done, it will let you review it and you can tell it to send or not.
You can also have Siri read your email messages to you, so you can say, “Check email,” or you can say, “Read my last email,” or, “Read my email to me.” And it will read you the most recent messages in your inbox. I find myself doing that when I’m driving I just ask Siri to tell me what’s in my email and I can get an idea of what’s going on there. You can also reply to email messages and send them that way.
When I’m traveling, either for pleasure or for work, I also use Siri to find things to do and places to eat. You can ask for directions. You can say, “Take me home,” or “How do I get home” and Siri will give you turn by turn directions to whatever you have as a home address. Or you can say, “Show me 4740 Kingsway Drive in Indianapolis,” and that will give you directions right here to Easter Seals crossroads. You can tell it to show you the current location. You can say, “Show my current location.” You can also do point of interests. You can say, “show me the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.” Or you can do directions, you can say, “Show me directions from Indianapolis, Indiana to Chicago, Illinois.” And Siri will do that as well.
You can even find things to eat and things to do. You can say, “Where is Starbucks” or “Find coffee near me” or you can say, “What’s a good Mexican restaurant around here.” Or you can say, “Show me a gas station within walking distance” which might be very important if your car has run out of gas.
You can use Siri to send text messages as well. You can say, “Tell my wife I’ll be right there.” Or “Send a message to Scott” or you can say things like, “Text Jason and Lisa where are you” and it will send a message to multiple people asking that question. You can tell Siri to read your messages to you. You can say, “Read my new messages” or “Read it again.” You can also reply to a text message. When it’s on your screen, you can say, “Reply, okay.” Or you can say, “Tell them I’m on my way.” Or you can even say things like, “Call him.” So if there’s a message on the screen from somebody, you can say, “Call him,” and it will stick to the phone number associate with that contact.
It’s kind of ironic. One of the things that I find myself using very frequently on my phone is the flashlight and turning Wi-Fi off and on depending on where I am. I didn’t realize until I was looking at this list at that is something Siri can do for you. You can say things like, “Turn on airplane mode,” “Turn off Wi-Fi,” “Turn on Bluetooth,” you can even say, “Turn on flashlight” or “Turn up brightness of display” or you can ask, “Is Bluetooth on?” Or you can even say things like, “Display privacy settings” or “Open phone settings” so that you can look and see what’s going on there.
Is a lot you can do with social media. You can say, “Post on Facebook on my way to vacation.” Not a good idea, but you could certainly do that. You can also say, “Right on my wall, having a great time on vacation. Please come steal to things from my house.” I’m kidding about that. You can use Siri to do stuff on Facebook. You can also post to Twitter. You can say, “Tweet” and then whatever your message is going to be. Or you can say, “Post to twitter, having a great day.” Also you can also ask questions about what’s trending on Twitter. Or you can search Twitter for things. You could say, “Search Twitter for Assistive Technology Update,” and find out what’s happening with our show on Twitter.
A lot of things related to movies and entertainment. You can say, “Show me football scores from Sunday.” You can say, “How are the Colts doing?” You can say, “What’s the Colts’ score?” If you’re a Colts fan. If you’re in Indianapolis, we hope that you are.
You can also, like Anna did in her demonstration, ask about the movies. “Find theaters near my home.” You can say what action movies are playing, what PG rated movies are planned. Or you can even say, “What movie won best picture in 2007” or “Who starred in the movie Saving Private Ryan” you have access to information like that.
There’s a lot of stuff you can get in terms of scientific and mathematical information as well. You can ask Siri, and it hands it off to a service called Wolfram Alpha. Some pretty complicated things. Examples from this website are things like “What is an 18% tip on $86.74 for four people?” And it will give you a calculation for that. You can say “How many calories in a bagel?” And it will use some common information available from the web to tell you the exact that. You can ask questions like “How many days until Christmas?” “What was the Best Picture of 1983?” “How many dollars is €45?” “What’s the square root of 128?” “Show me the Orion constellation” “What’s the population of Jamaica?” “What’s the price of gasoline in Chicago?” Or “How deep is the Atlantic ocean?”
I’m going to stick a link in the show notes to this list. Very comprehensive list of Siri commands. I’m also going to put a link in the show notes to some of the funny things. In an episode not too long ago, I included some things that you can say to Siri and it will joke with you or sing songs or do those kind of things. I’ll pop a link of those into the show notes as well.
I hope that you enjoyed our day in the life with Siri today and learn a little bit about how you can use that service on your iPhone or iPad or your iPod touch that hooked to a Wi-Fi network to be a little bit more independent. I really do feel like I was devices have revolutionized the world of assistive technology and opened up a lot of doors for people with disabilities to be more independent. I hope that today we shed a little more light on how that particular tool Siri can be a part of that.
WADE WINGLER: Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? Call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Looking for show notes from today’s show? Head on over to EasterSealstech.com. Shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject, or check us out on Facebook. That was your Assistance Technology Update. I’m Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana.
