speech radio

Category

Description of App

This application brings simplicity and variety, along with two unique features. Firstly, the entire app can be driven by your voice and works alongside your existing ‘TalkBack’ feature. Secondly the ability to say “Speech off” taking the application to gesture mode. Where you can use swipes and double taps to navigate all the content. Bringing the perfect balance when you are unable or don’t want to use your voice to control the application.

Just say “BBC Radio 1” or the full name of a worldwide station and it will be played. Or if you don’t know the full name provide a word or phrase and a list of stations will be presented.

Use the item number to easily pronounce and select from the list of options.

Give the name of any Country, or just say “quick search”, then ask for “Cricket”, “Football” or “New York News” if you need more help finding suggestions.

This is an application bursting with features, with the ability to add and remove stations to your favourites and much more.

In this release BWBF has integrated its Membership Area into this application, this will require users to register their personal information and sign in to gain access. This registration and sign in will finally allow us to be able to identify every user and provide support accordingly. BWBF takes the security and respect of your data very seriously your personal data is not provided to any external organisation. The purpose is to stay in touch with our users, improve our applications and make all our apps work better for you.

Backed by our dedicated ‘Streamed Service’, we are committed to bringing you access to new stations and audio streams, as they come along. We simply listen to the content you want added, just email us your suggestions at apps@blind.org.uk. We will endeavour to deal with all requests within 10 working days.

We are continually looking to improve this application, why not register to become of our testers. Please contact apps@blind.org.uk if you wanted to become part of this support.

Full information on this can be found at https://www.bwbf.org.uk/

Request to Delete your Data:

https://bwbf.org.uk/legal/delete-account-request/

Version

2.0

Free or Paid

Free

Apple Watch Support

Not Known

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone
iPad

iOS Version

18.1.1

Accessibility Comments

Great app, really accessible with VoiceOver.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all page elements.

Button Labeling

All buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver and is easy to navigate and use.

Other Comments

I heard a demonstration of this app on the In touch podcast from the BBC. This app is great.
1. You can get stations from all around the world, not just speech stations, maybe the app name is a bit misleading.
2. Stations load really quickly, there isn't much buffering at all. There aren't any adverts apart from a banner that pops up, see below.
3. There's a voice feature where you can tell it which station you want to play, and it'll play it. There's a 'voice' tab, and once you activate it, you can speak. To get out of this mode, just say, 'speech off' or 'voice off'. There are help sections in the app too. I haven't messed about with this much, because I don't like controling apps with my voice. When the voice assistant gives you options to choose from, you have to say 'number 1', you can't just say the number on its own.
there are some observations and things I should point out. I've emailed the developers about these.
1. There are two registration forms, the standard one that first appears when you access the registration screen, and an alternative one you can access via a link on the registration form. I pointed out it would be better to just use an accessible form to start with, Thus illiminating the need for 2 forms. I actually registered with the standard one that first pops up, and 2 things stood out to me: In the month field, you can't use a 0 before any month that would usually require one. I didn't know this, but when I typed in my month of birth with a 0 followed by the required digit, it just wouldn't work, so I tried typing the single digit without the 0 and it worked. Maybe the alternative form which I didn't try doesn't have this issue.
2. In the password field on the standard registration form, and when you log in, the password isn't hidden. The password field behaves like an ordinary text field. The password you type isn't rendered as * symbols to a screen reader, it's just ordinary text.
3. You have to create an account to use this app, and you have to give your address too, this isn't optional. I pointed out that some users might not feel comfortable giving their address.
4. When a station starts, a notice pops up, and you have to dismiss the notice or you can't play another station. Dismissing this notice is accessible, but it gets a bit annoying. You can move to another station, but you just can't play it. When you double tap nothing happens until you dismiss the banner. It's just a notice saying something like 'powered by the British wireless foundation' or something like that. They're the people who developed this app.
5. When you browse the stations from a particular country, there's just a massive long list of stations. But I pointed out that it would be nice if stations could be grouped by numbers and then each letter of the alphabet. The numbers, and then each letter of the alphabet could have a separate heading with VoiceOver. People could use the headings function in VoiceOver to navigate through them. This would be a quicker way of finding a station if the search function doesn't bring up what you want, as in my case it usually doesn't even though I type in the name exactly. According to the guy in the interview, they're working on the search functionality.
I hope this info helps you, this really is a great app!

Developer's Twitter Username

@British Wireless

Recommendations

1 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by Tara 1 day 9 hours ago

Options

Comments

By Ollie on Thursday, November 21, 2024 - 13:43

I'm really not happy handing over quite this much data. I don't understand why support can't be provided like any other app where you simply email the developer.

By Brian on Thursday, November 21, 2024 - 13:43

I do have 1 small question though. Regarding #5, would Item Chooser help with this particular screen? For example, in the App Library, when I activate Item Chooser, it allows me to navigate by headings and such.

By Ekaj on Thursday, November 21, 2024 - 13:43

It looks like there is only one form now, and I had no trouble navigating it. I think I have yet to receive a confirmation email, but it said my registration was successful. I can't wait to check out yet another free and accessible app!

By Tara on Thursday, November 21, 2024 - 14:43

Hi all,
Olly, I even thought of not posting this here because I knew the issue of personal data would be an issue likely for many here. I totally understand your concerns, and I did write that in my email that a lot of users probably wouldn't be happy about giving their address! I nearly didn't create an account, but I thought what the hec. I'd been looking for an app where the radio station starts really quickly. I ttried the Broadcasts app, but the list of countries is just one massive long list and I really didn't have the heart to scroll through however many countries. But maybe Brian's item chooser suggestion could help with that! At least with the speech radio app, countries are grouped by continent so it's a lot easier to find what I'm looking for in that respect. There are so many radio apps talked about on this site, ootunes, receiver, my tuner radio etc.. Still haven't tried any of these yet. Maybe I'll give them a go at some point.
Brian, what a great idea! I didn't try the item chooser originally because I don't use it myself. However I've just tried it, and sadly it didn't work. I chose England as my country, and then I chose the 'all stations' option. So now on the screen, there are all the stations for England, hundreds, and there are still the tabs for the app at the bottom. When I move to the list of stations, I activate the item chooser, and now there is the index, but not all the letters of the alphabet are there, there is A, B, and then it jumps to E, in fact most of the alphabet is missed out. When I double tap on a letter and swipe to the right, I just get the huge list of stations like before. Nice idea though.
And Ekaj, glad you were able to register no problems! I installed the app on Tuesday night, just after I heard the podcast, so maybe they've updated it since then, who knows? Hope you like the app.

By Brian on Thursday, November 21, 2024 - 19:43

Tara, hopefully the developers will make an update, and design heading navigation for the station list page. Weird that Item Chooser wasn't showing all of the alphabet letters, but maybe not all of the letters are represented? In other words, maybe there is no B, or C, etc., section yet?
Just a thought ... 🤷🏽‍♂️

By Tara on Thursday, November 21, 2024 - 21:43

There are hundreds and hundreds of stations for each country I've looked at, France, Germany, the UK, Australia, and they most definitely have Bs and Cs and pretty much every letter of the alphabet. No, it's the item chooser, it doesn't bring up any of the stations in a list like that. And it doesn't work even when I double tap to move to one of the letters in the index. I tried the item chooser in the broadcasts app too, and exactly the same result. No luck, even though there are hundreds of stations for each country, and there's pretty much all the letters of the alphabet!

By Brian on Thursday, November 21, 2024 - 22:53

Well, I tried. Lol
Maybe a future update will make the station list page more accessibly navigational. Here's to hoping. 🤔

By Ollie on Friday, November 22, 2024 - 05:21

Of course, even though I moaned, I did sign up, populating my address with a bogus one.

It's a good concept so far, but a little... I'm not quite sure how to describe it, aside from when devices are made for blind people with big rubber bumpers on each edge and an entire lack of elegance. I get the same feeling from this. I guess it is probably aimed at those blind folk who aren't tech junkies like us and don't hang about such forums, hence the voice control. Disappointed to note it's not accessible through shortcuts for siri control.

Triode might be an interesting alternative to those who don't want to hand over data though I don't think the listings are quite as robust.

One thing I would appreciate in any app like this is having details of the programming up when you connect to the stream.

don't get me wrong, this is an excellent find, just feels its not quite reached its potential yet.

By Tara on Friday, November 22, 2024 - 13:01

Yes Olly, that would be good. I've seen other radio apps with that. The thing I like about this app is the amount of stations. If the developer replies back to me, I'll ask him about Siri shourtcuts and the ability to know what program is being streamed from a particular radio station. Those would be cool features I think.

By Ollie on Friday, November 22, 2024 - 15:02

It does say on locked screen what station we're listening to which is a great start. I'm thinking it could be especially useful to read the meta data for the audio book radio station.

All the streams do seem to be of a high quality. In a lot of cases, apps like this, only use 128 kbps streams which is a bit rubbish.