million cases, highest of iii million cases, highest of any country in the world. trade talks between britain and the european union have been put on hold until a minister boris johnson and the commission president ursula von der leyen hold direct talks on saturday. they will try to bridge significant differences in three key areas, competition, governance and fisheries. the us president—electjoe biden has called for urgent bipartisan agreement in congress to help people who have lost jobs as congress to help people who have lostjobs as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. he said americans needed help now. new figures show the jobs market continues to grow although at a slowing rate. now on bbc news, it's click. this week: hands, face... there are people, yeah, got them.

race. hello, welcome to click. hope you're all doing 0k. it is that time of year when we mark the international day of persons with disabilities. it happens on december the third and we have a show this week all about accessibility intact. click's very own paul carter has been putting the show together for us putting the show together for us and thanks to the magic of television, he's here. hello, paul! hi, guys, how you doing? good to see you. it's not magic, really. someone tell her. that's right, this is a show all about disability tech andi show all about disability tech and i should point out we cover these stories all year round on click, it'sjust that these stories all year round on click, it's just that this juande gives us a particular

excuse to unashamedly focus just on these issues. it is a lwa ys just on these issues. it is always such an inspiring show andi always such an inspiring show and i wonder how it has been curating and and i wonder how it has been cu rating and putting and i wonder how it has been curating and putting this programme together during a pandemic. it's been a challenge, i'm not going to lie. it might look a little bit different in terms of scale and scope from previous years but as this pandemic showed us, disabled people regularly have to find ways of adapting and using technology so it's an appropriate thing for the programme. how has this lockdown affected you personally? it's not always been easy. lots of disabled people, you know, me included, have had issues around isolation and loneliness. one of the real positives to come out of this has been the rise of remote working and technology that makes that possible. disabled people have been calling for it for years and were often told it is not possible and these last crazy, crazy few months have shown us that actually, it is more possible than we probably thought. and i wonder what that will mean for the future. well, we'll have more from paul later on in the show but first, lucy edwards, who is somewhere between becoming radio one's

first blind dj and a tick—tock phenomenon, she has been investigating how ai could be making smartphones latest must have accessory for people with jewel impairments. if you're blind like me, text that describes its surroundings can be life changing. facing south—west along the piazza. not that it always gets it right. is there a bike park in front of us? that was last year. now, the new iphone 12 comes with lidar to help users detect people around them. that's especially useful right now when we are all meant to be socially distancing. i asked my best friend dave to help me give it a go. hello! how are you? good thank you, how are you? good thank you, how are you? nice to see you. in these strange times i have felt a bit anxious about leaving the house. have you tried it at the house. have you tried it at the house yet or is this the first time? this is the first ever

time. the world outside is so inaccessible at the moment for me and! inaccessible at the moment for me and i don't know if people are going to coffee on my face or where they are in proximity to me but will this in my hand have the answer? —— morkov. no people detected so i guess that is correct. as we set off down my local high street we saw the tool could be amazingly accurate. a white building with accurate. a white building with a red sign on it. a person wearing a helmet sitting on a motorcycle. then again, it did also think that dave was a child. hilarious! a child standing in front of a building. did that to say a child in front of a building?” don't know! it said in front of a building though.” don't know! it said in front of a building though. i don't know if that is accurate! but what really surprised me was the people proximity alerts. there are two people, yeah, got them. it is almost getting every person that is walking past. there is a person 1.5 metres away from me! do i need to socially distance? the

smartphone counts down as people get closer. i found you, you are five metres away. i am! four metres away. two. 1.5... and your cane is about to... there we go. 0.5, thank goodness you're in my bubble, babe. i think this is going to be useful even after the pandemic for tackling things like cues. right, you're there. a person standing on a sidewalk in front of a store. that is incredible. two metres away. i'm to eat his way! oh, there's another person. honestly, i think knowing that people are around me freaks me out a little bit because i'm really not used to knowing where people are! so i'm going to have to get used to wait but i'm really excited that i can be in control again. but any ai tool can only ever be as good as its training data. and objects like braille readers or

white canes have never been the focus of an ai database before. until now. these clips have been collected by microsoft city university of london and the university of oxford. but they have all been filmed by people like robin. it's really important that blind people themselves are the ones to do themselves are the ones to do the recording of the things that are important to them. they are the ones that are capturing these training videos because they other people who are going to be using the softwa re are going to be using the software defined the objects and they might not line it up in the viewfinder very well. it might be obscured by another object, you know, it may be partially hidden because, you know, the machine learning behind it, the brain behind it will be that much smarter. and it will give that much better a more inclusive experience for people with a vision impairment. so far, some 3000 videos have already been collected. and the project aims to gather around 10,000 clips

in total. we developed a data collection, it runs on an iphone, they can download it, and then we ask them to take some videos, so seven videos of at least five objects, through the data collection app that will automatically get uploaded and we check it. because this ai can learn from just a handful of clips, users will be able to teach it personalised object. that means being able to pick out your keys or your cane from other people's. the just imagine if i could train it to say yes, robin's shoes. oroh, it to say yes, robin's shoes. or oh, those it to say yes, robin's shoes. oroh, those are it to say yes, robin's shoes. or oh, those are robin's classes. particularly when you have family members leaving their stuff around as well. is this my mug that i'm about to pick up or is it somebody else's? the database will undoubtably improve, seeing ai and soundscape. two audio tools already launched by microsoft. the biggest gap is what we have been calling the data desert, to really light up all of that

potential. we start to realise that there is not enough data, holistically, not just that there is not enough data, holistically, notjust for anyone thing but not enough data. from next year, the database will also become open source. so anyone can build better products, whether that is for your smartphone or even your smart glasses. oh, yeah! hi five. blind girl high—5! will it come to glasses soon? boy, i really do hope it will! i would actually wear these glasses around the house, not just out and about. because then everything that i look at would be spoken to me. well, that sounds amazing. i use apps every single day but i've never seen every single day but i've never seen something that would personalise objects in my hand before and this would be groundbreaking for the visually impaired community. lucy edwards there. paul, do you think the smartphones are going

to become vital tools for blind people? absolutely, i think lucy touched on it there, what has been extraordinary has been the pace of change in that smartphones now i just absolutely essential as an accessibility aid. do you think there is even more to come in this space? absolutely. i think the next thing will be live on the next thing will be live on the fly, people wreck mission so the fly, people wreck mission so it can identify individual people, notjust people in general. but i think it a more wider sense, ai is going to have huge implications for this area andi have huge implications for this area and i think there is more companies cordoning on to the power, then we will see it rolled out much more widely. hello and welcome to the week in tech. the week that tiktok started allowing some users to record longer three minute mini is as part of a test run instead of the usual one minute limit. spotify has had some of its pages defaced by a hacker put up pictures of its own snapchat other things. and apple revealed the nhs covid—19

app was the second most downloaded iphone app in the uk this year, only the video chat up this year, only the video chat up zoom this year, only the video chat up zoom was this year, only the video chat up zoom was installed more times. it was also the week that one of biology‘s biggest mysteries was mostly solved by artificial intelligence. deep mind has used their ai alpha fold to largely predict with very high accuracy how a protein folds into a unique 3d shape. trained using the shapes of known proteins, alpha fold was able to do in a matter of days what might take years in a lab. researchers at mit csail have created way for robots to design its own robotic body by considering the available paths, terrain and obstacles. the system creates a body that best suits the conditions. and finally, do you want your own robotic rover? this is a mini replica of the european space agency's rosalind franklin roosevelt which is meant to go to mars in 2022. they have

allowed people to download materials so they can 3d print the bot at home and even drive it around using your phone. you can even pick what hut it wears! oh! cute. backin back in 2016, we were in switzerland at the first ever cybathalon. the well‘s only competition where people with physical disabilities compete using assistive devices and robotic technologies. this is the olympics for bionic athletes. and the competitors known as pilots are notjust putting their own abilities but also technological boundaries. this serves an important platform for research into assistive devices for everyday use. 0ver assistive devices for everyday use. over the last four years the pilots and technology developers kept working to prepare for the 2020 cybathlon

and, in spite of the pandemic, the competition has gone ahead. however, instead of competing in zurich's swiss arena, 51 international teams participated in their home countries. three, two, one... in six different disciplines, the pilots tackled tasks and obstacles, trying to get around courses in the shortest time while anchoring the lowest number of penalties. the events we re number of penalties. the events were recorded and sent to the organisers in zurich to be judged. we go straight to seoul in south korea to look at him. that quickly go over to india,. they were broadcasters if they we re they were broadcasters if they were happening live with the results kept secret until that moment. column shows a perfect term, blasts clean through corner four. and with the teams

participating remotely, all of the competitors needed to face exactly the same conditions. the first step is that we have a which clearly defines the rules by which the tasks have to be completed but also the dimensions. by which the tasks have to be set up. and of course they had to be a way of ensuring everyone stuck to the rules. we recruited referees all over the world in the last month. trained them also via videoconferences and we did some more tests them and now they are ready to judge the performance of the pilots. each discipline challenged teams to solve everyday problems. now again, over that rough terrain! in the powered wheelchair race, competitors had to manoeuvre through confined spaces, over rough terrain, and even upstairs. bernhard venter is one of the many tech officers who inspired by the cybathlon button 2016 to take technology

further. about six years ago i wa nted further. about six years ago i wanted to do a student project. i had the idea to build a call robot that could climb steps. at the same time, the cybathlon was initiated so the idea came he, we could put a seat on top. this is what we did. he built a wheelchair that could climb stairs. bernardo and i have history. here he is as a student trying to rescue me from peril as his first prototype leaves me hanging. literally. does this look is terrifying to you as it does to me? i'm not sure what is going to happen right now. no, it doesn't work. whoa! then, tragically, in a 2016 competition, his machine failed to get the starting grid. but now his company manufactures and sells its motorised wheelchairs and they do work.”

can finally visit my neighbours next door because too often, they have long stairs leading to the doors and actually, i haven't been in their homes for the last five years since my accident so i could for the first time visit them. central to the cybathlon is how the solutions could work in everyday life. powered arm prosthetics are used to cut red, screen bite bulbs and hung up red, screen bite bulbs and hung up washing. exoskeletons are challenged with tasks like getting up from the sofa. even technologies like ranger computer interfaces are being tested. the system detect brain signals and uses them to control and avatar in a virtual race. and, in a cycling task, for competitors with paraplegia, the complete or partial paralysis of the lower half of the body, to make known as functional electrical

stimulation is used to enable them to perform a pedalling movement on a reclining b i cycle. movement on a reclining bicycle. back in 2016 we met johnny beer as he trained and competed in the 750 metre race. as technology hasn't proved over the last four years, the distance has increased but it still has to be covered in the same time of eight minutes. three, two, one, go. this is a gentleman who is looking to turn the tables! johnny beer. in 2016, i got four minutes eight seconds. he is so close! oh, and it is coming up beer. the imperial circle team takes... today i got two minutes 57 seconds but the 1200 metres so technically, i am 100% faster. every cybathlon there is, the technology is going to get better and that is a good thing for disabled

people. some competitors even turned their living rooms and makeshift tv studios with cameras linking back to zurich, screens with countdowns, and even cheering supporters. and there is the closure of the door! while it is a competition, cybathlon is first and foremost a place for collaboration, technological development, inclusion and a showcase for what is needed by people with disabilities. that brings it all back, doesn't it? we were there in 2016 and i have to say, it was one of the highlights of my entire time on this programme. it was incredible. i think it's much like seeing any sporting event, you don't quite appreciate the wonder of it when you see it on tv as you do in the flesh. now we're going to talk about gaming specifically our accessible videogames games rates are poon videogames games rates are poor, tell us about this next story, please. well, with the

new next gen consoles now on sale, the ps five an xbox series acts, questions of asked about how accessible they are. is this a most accessible generation of console gaming ever? so we've been looking into this and seeing what changes have been made for disabled gamers? i remember seeing my first games console probably when i was around five or six but itjust wasn't something that kind of appealed to me at the time, primarily because the controllers were just completely inaccessible to me. i have congenital alopecia which is a bit like cerebral palsy but only affects the right side of my body so my left hand is pretty 0k. right hand, on the other hand... . so having a control in front of me, it navigates a character movement all the same time is really, really difficult. with the nintendo wii, that was a

really important console for me but i suppose my first real exposure to gaming personally was through the playstation two. the release of the eye toy, you have a little camera above the telly and it would pick up all your movements and it would correspond with the games. i could do that and then invite my friends over. the itoy to playstation two was the first time i really experienced accessibility and gaming, even though that was completely unintended thankfully we've come a long way in the 17 years since an hour accessibility is being considered on the very start of the design process. there has been such an awakening across the industry and within our culture that it is no longer an afterthought and it is so much of the forefront of everything we do now. we've made leaps and bound evolutions in fine motor and auditory impairment and visual impairment. so with the new generation of controllers being

touted as the most accessible ever, it's now just touted as the most accessible ever, it's nowjust up to me to get to grips with them. so this is the playstation five dual sense controller. it's pretty cool and it's got an ergonomic design that makes it quite easy to hold. what's also really cool is that all of these buttons can be remapped on the console so if you are, like me, left—handed, you can put all of the controls on the left—hand side, if you like. it's also got feedback. and it isn'tjust sony's playstation that is taking steps to make games controllers more accessible. microsoft has been working with disability charities to help create something unique. this is the xbox adaptive controller. it came out in 2018 and it's pretty cool. it's basically like one central controller but as you can see, there are loads and loads of ports here that you can plug in any control that you like to

make a more bespoke gaming experience. it's interesting, you know? i've been in the industry now for 20 something yea rs industry now for 20 something years and definitely i would say not just at xbox but years and definitely i would say notjust at xbox but in all the partner publishers and developers and companies i deal with, the awareness is a lot higher and i think the realisation is that when you design for accessibility challenges and opportunities, you actually open up so many other doors for a range of scenarios that are unexpected and you end up sort of solving for one but applying to many in a really positive way and i think that's really catching on in the industry. taking a closer look, it really does seem closer look, it really does seem the consoles of added loads of accessible features and menus both the consoles and the games. new cursor sensitivity. enhanced auto aim. like the ps five, the xbox's accessibility menu has a screen

reader and custom button assignments. there are also captions, voice recognition and even transcription facilities. accessibility and technology often focuses on education tools or disabled people's abilities to adapt to surroundings on a day—to—day basis but it rarely tackles entertainment and downtime. it's like we are surviving, but not thriving. special effect is a charity that recognises this and understands how important accessible gaming is to disabled people. what we do is if someone wants an assessment, if someone wants an assessment, if there is a game they want to play, we are able to send the equipment out to them and then we would go out and do assessment for the majority of people we help because being there is so important. the most important thing is this. the gaming industry is becoming so much more inclusive and it's paving the way for accessible tack everywhere but, most importantly, it normalises the idea of considering

accessibility from the get go, from the initial blueprints to the final product. and it's this normalising of disability that could help us change our attitudes towards disability in the future. that was niamhy hughes. and paul, do you think the games industry is finally paying attention to this market? they do, or at least i think they are getting there. as niamhy‘s experience showed us, we have a lost generation of gamers who want to get involved but found it was something that is not accessible for them and thankfully, that is starting to change. generally, do you think 2020 has been a good year for accessibility? well, it seems weird to be talking about taking positives from this year, but i think in accessibility terms on the whole, yes. a lot of the new features and products that have been super accessible for disabled people this year, a lot of them have almost come about by accident. and i think

that plays into this notion of inclusive design, but if you include and design products for disabled people from the ground up, you end up with better products for everybody. paul, thank you so much. and don't forget, we have loads of content relating to disability at bbc arch with you can find at bbc arch with you can find at bbc.co.uk/ouch. and a reminder that clicker 20, a celebration is happening this thursday at 1230 gmt. exciting. and if you want to be on our live on line audience, then do send us a direct message via twitter or instagram at @bbclick. in the week, we will be sending you a link to click on if you'd all like to watch. that is it for this week, thank you so much for watching and see you soon. you so much for watching and see you soon. bye—bye.

hello there. it's been a wintry scene for many parts of the uk. we started with widespread snow in scotland. that then turned to rain and most of any snow that's falling right now is really over the higher ground. but, more recently, there has been some snow through the midlands, particularly over the peak district. but it's been a messy picture because we've had these bands of cloud bringing wet weather swirling around an area of low pressure together with some stronger winds. that low pressure, though, will tend to move down into france, so, for a start, the winds will ease and through the weekend we should be turning drier as well. but we're still in cold air. with some clearing skies by the morning across some parts the midlands, eastern england, we are likely to find a frost and likely to find some

icy conditions as well. elsewhere across the uk, it won't be quite as chilly, not going to be as cold as last night in scotland. there's more cloud around, there's wetter weather too. and the wetter weather across wales, western england will become confined to the south—west. we have a few showers breaking out, running into some eastern coasts of england but for many, it will be turning dry with some sunshine. the weather improving in northern ireland as well and those showers in scotland becoming fewer with sunshine especially in the south—west. another chilly day, not as windy as it was on friday but those temperatures 4—7 degrees. heading into the evening, clearer skies in the evening allowing those temperatures to fall quickly but we are likely to find some cloud and wetter weather just running into the far east of scotland and into the north—east of england as well. that'll keep the temperatures up here, perhaps, but elsewhere we're likely to find frost, probably more widely, and it brings the risk of some icy patches as well. not only that, but quite foggy by the morning and across the south—east of england, east anglia.

that should tend to lift, perhaps only into low cloud, mind you. and we will still keep some cloud coming into the north—east of england, perhaps the midlands, bringing with it a few showers. the odd shower around elsewhere but also some sunshine. probably the best temperatures will be in wales and the south—west, 8, maybe 9 degrees but in the cloud further east, it's going to be colder, around 4 celsius or so. early next week, we've got one area of low pressure running to the south—west of the uk, another one threatening to come in off the north sea. and that will bring some wetter weather probably on tuesday into parts of scotland, but early next week, genearlly it is going to be dry. it is going to be cold and could be quite grey, with some patches of persistent fog.

welcome to bbc news. i'm lewis vaughan jones. our top stories: new lockdown orders and restrictions are imposed in san francisco to help curb a surge in coronavirus cases. brexit trade talks are paused after eu and uk negotiators fail to reach agreement. president trump orders the withdrawal of nearly all us troops from somalia. officials there call it a morale boost for terrorists. and a special report from beirut, four months after the explosion which killed more than 200 people. the government knew that the dangerous chemicals were being stored here. so did the judiciary. so too did the port authorities. it was only the lebanese people who were being keptin lebanese people who were being kept in the dark.