GuideConnect 1.15

GuideConnect 1.15 includes an all new Video Calling feature to make it easier than ever to stay connected with loved ones. 1.15 also includes a host of improvements for sending emails, writing documents and much more, plus new in-product messages to inform you when your Premium Plan is due for renewal. GuideConnect 1.15 is now available in UK English, US English, Australian English, New Zealand English and Canadian English. Releases for additional languages will follow.

NEW: Accessible Video Calling

An all new Video Calling feature is now available in GuideConnect 1.15, making it easier than ever to keep in touch with the ones you love. Video Calling is the first Premium feature to be added to GuideConnect, exclusively available to customers who have an active Premium Plan.

For GuideConnect customers - Make and receive video calls using GuideConnect

Mainstream video calling services like Skype, Zoom and Microsoft Teams can be difficult to use with assistive technology. This is why Dolphin has developed our own video calling service making it easier than ever to make and receive video calls in GuideConnect. 

• Make a video call to anyone who is in your address book – the person you are calling can answer using GuideConnect or the Dolphin Video Calling Service.
• Add friends to your favourites list so they’re easier to find. Once added to favourites, GuideConnect will also announce whether they are online or offline before you make a call.
• Accessible buttons during a call make it easy to turn your camera and microphone on and off and to end the call.
• Never lose your place - if a friend calls you while you’re writing an email, GuideConnect will return you back to the email as soon as the call is ended.
• New Video Calling Settings have been added to allow you to choose your camera and microphone for video calls and specify who is allowed to make video calls to you.

For Friends and Family - Make and receive video calls using the Dolphin Video Calling Service

Your friends and family don’t need to be using GuideConnect to make a video call to you – they can sign up a FREE Dolphin Account to use the Dolphin Video Calling Service. 

Using their Dolphin Account, friends and family can sign in to the Dolphin website from their computer, tablet or smartphone. Once signed in, they can add your email address to their address book and make a video call to you. 

Premium Plan notifications

Every copy of GuideConnect includes a 12-month Premium Plan (previously called GCAS). This 12-month plan entitles you to:

• Use Premium features (including video calling)
• Receive regular updates containing new features and improvements, and 
• Get your Support queries answered first by Dolphin’s Product Support team. 

GuideConnect 1.15 now includes in-product notifications to check if your Premium Plan is about to expire. If your Premium Plan is close to expiring, you will receive a message when you start GuideConnect to help you keep your plan up to date. 
You can also check when your Premium Plan is due to expire at any time. To do this, from GuideConnect’s Main Menu: Choose ‘Tools’, then choose ‘About’, then select ‘Check my Premium Plan’ and GuideConnect will tell you when your Premium Plan is due to expire.

Find out more about Premium Plans for GuideConnect and how to renew at www.YourDolphin.com/PremiumPlan.

Improvements for email

• NEW: You can now sign in to AOL email accounts in GuideConnect.
• NEW: If you have opened an email but would like to return to it later, you can now mark an email as “unread” using the actions menu.
• NEW: You can now select links from both HTML and text-only emails to open them in GuideConnect’s web browser. A new item for “Links” has been added to the actions menu when you are reading an email. Selecting this option opens a list of all the links in the email.
• NEW: If you’re viewing a text-only email, you can now move through the email character by character and word by word, plus you can also select and copy text from it. 
• NEW: You can now create a signature for your emails in GuideConnect’s Email settings. Once created, your signature will be added every time you write a new email or if you reply to an email or forward an email you have received.
• FIX: New emails are now received as expected for email accounts using POP settings (e.g. guidemail).
• FIX: If you open a link in an email to a web page, exiting the web page now returns you to the email as expected.
• FIX: If you send an email using the Dolphin remote, the on screen keyboard no longer opens after the email is sent.

Improvements for documents

• NEW: A ‘Find’ feature has been added to allow you to find instances of a word or phrase in your document. Whilst in your document, hold the CTRL key and press F, then type the word or phrase you would like to find and GuideConnect will move to the next instance of that word or phrase in the document.
• NEW: Documents – You can now open PDF files which are password protected.
• FIX: Documents – A new “standard paper” size has been added to the settings when printing a document or labels. This new option is ideal for printers which are specifically designed for printing labels.
• NEW: Documents – When printing labels, GuideConnect allows you to choose the type of label you would like to print onto. In 1.15, a new label type (Avery label 5160) has been added to this list for customers in the US.

Other improvements

• FIX: Back-up and Restore - Your email settings are now saved when you choose to back-up GuideConnect’s settings.
• FIX: Back-up and restore - If you choose to reset GuideConnect to factory settings, your email settings are now cleared as expected.
• FIX: Back-up and Restore – After choosing to restore your settings, the device is now restarted as expected.
• NEW: Books and News - A new menu system has been added for the Italian newspaper provider UICI. This new menu system allows GuideConnect customers in Italy to subscribe to Italian newspapers, then choose which section and which article they would like to read.
• NEW: Books and News – Customers in New Zealand can find, download and read books from the Blind Low Vision New Zealand (BLVNZ) library.
• FIX: Books and News – The option to delete books now works correctly when reading from a device.
• NEW: File Explorer – If your computer has more than one internal storage drive, you can now open files saved to it in GuideConnect. To open a file from a different internal storage drive, use the ‘Open from device’ action in your documents list, your pictures list or in File Explorer. 
• NEW: File Explorer – Audio files in WMA format are now listed in File Explorer.
• NEW: General – When you zoom in to a menu, GuideConnect now announces when the menu changes from displaying tiles to displaying as a list.
• FIX: General – GuideConnect is faster to start up on computers which have a slow internet connection.
• FIX: General – If you paste text into a password field in GuideConnect, the text is no longer announced.
• FIX: General – A small number of customers reported that they can hear a background noise when using GuideConnect at the same time as other applications (e.g. Zoom). An option has now been added for a member of Dolphin’s Support team to stop this background noise. 
• NEW: Help – Links to relevant tutorial videos have been added to GuideConnect’s help.
• FIX: Music – You are now returned to the correct place after importing an album from a CD.
• FIX: Music – the LEFT and RIGHT arrow buttons now skip forward and backward by 30 seconds as expected.
• FIX: Music – After selecting to play a track, GuideConnect now announces the name of both the album and the track that is being played.
• NEW: Scanning – After performing a scan and read, a new action has been added to turn column mode ON or OFF within from your scanned document.
• NEW: Settings – An option to choose whether GuideConnect announces spelling errors as you type has been added to the settings. To find this setting, open ‘Settings’, choose ‘Speech and Audio’, then choose ‘Speech when typing’
• FIX: Settings – the correct flags for Australia and New Zealand are now displayed in GuideConnect’s Display Language settings.
• FIX: Translations – Colour schemes in GuideConnect’s Appearance settings are now announced in their correct language.
• FIX: Translations – The French and Russian versions of GuideConnect now set the scanner recognition to the correct language.
• FIX: Translations - Italian: Symbols that are typed using the right Alt key on the keyboard (Alt Gr) are now spoken correctly.
• FIX: Translations – Negative numbers are now announced correctly in Swedish.
• FIX: Websites – Fix to ensure videos from Netflix can be played in GuideConnect’s web browser.
• FIX: Websites - Pull down list boxes are now announced by GuideConnect’s speech as expected.
• FIX: Websites - If you are in a web page, the quick navigation key ‘C’ will now move through all list boxes on the web page as expected.
• FIX: Websites – Certain links are no longer announced twice by GuideConnect’s speech.
• FIX: Websites – If you download an MP4 video file from a web page using GuideConnect’s web browser, the file is now downloaded to the correct location and can be played as expected.