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Show notes:
Panel: Brian Norton, Mark Stewart, Belva Smith, and Wade Wingler
Q1. People seem to mean different things when they discuss NaturallySpeaking “accuracy.” What is your take?
Q2. Should I pay to upgrade to JAWS 16?
– www.freedomscientific.com/downloads/jaws16
Q3. I’m interested in purchasing a Livescribe Pen for note taking. Can you tell me about the differences between the Echo and Livescribe3?
– http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/smartpen/
Q4. Can you purchase a Ruby XL HD (handheld video magnifier) for left-handed individuals? Other similar products?
Q5. What does ADL or IADL mean?
– http://www.ctdinstitute.org/sites/default/files/file_attachments/ATGlossary.pdf
– http://www.seniorcitizensguide.com/articles/southjersey/your-adls-and-iadls.html
Q6. I am blind and use a braille display to help me read text messages and emails. If I purchase an iwatch will I still be able to read these with my braille display.
– for more informatio email accessibility@apple.com
Q7. What cloud services do you use the most and which one could you NOT live without?
Send your questions: 317-721-7124 | tech@eastersealscrossroads.org | Tweet using
——-transcript follows ——
WADE WINGLER: Welcome to ATFAQ, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions with your host Brian Norton, Manager of Clinical Assistive Technology at Easter Seals Crossroads. This is a show in which we address your questions about assistive technology, the hardware, software, tools and gadgets that help people with disabilities lead more independent and fulfilling lives. Have a question you’d like answered on our show? Send a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ, call our listener line at 317-721-7124, or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. The world of assistive technology has questions, and we have answers. And now here’s your host, Brian Norton.
BRIAN NORTON: All right, hey guys. I want to welcome you guys to ATFAQ episode 13. I want to welcome the panel of guests that I have you with me today. First one is Belva. Belva is the team lead for our vision team here at Easter Seals crossroads. Belva, you want to say hey?
BELVA SMITH: Hi, guys.
BRIAN NORTON: And next is Mark. Mark is the team lead for our mobility and cognition team. Mark?
MARK STEWART: Hey, guys.
BRIAN NORTON: And we also have Wade in the room here. Wade is the director of our technology division here at Easter Seals crossroads and host of the popular podcast AT Update.
WADE WINGLER: Hey, hey, hey.
BRIAN NORTON: Before we jump into our questions this week, I just wanted to throw some things out there for the new listeners that may be tuning in this week. A little bit about how our show works. So for the past couple of weeks, we’ve been collecting questions, and that’s exactly what we do. We’ll collect your questions, throw them out here on the show, and as a group we’ll try to answer those as best we can, and/or point to in some directions for some helpful resources to give you some interest on those.
If you would like to ask questions, you can do it three different ways. We have a listener line. That listener line is 317-721-7124. You can email us at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or you can send us a tweet at hashtag #ATFAQ. If you’re looking for the show, you must have already found it because you’re listening, but if you do want to send out information for others on how to tune into the show, you can find our show on iTunes. You can find it at ATFAQshow.com, or on Stitcher.
WADE WINGLER: Brian, I want to tell folks about the listener line. Sometimes I think folks hesitate to call because they’re worried that we’ll answer the phone and asked them hard questions and stuff like that. Guys, it’s just a voice mailbox. In fact, we don’t enter that line live at any time. If you call our listener line, know that you’re going to be able to record your question. And if you feel like you mess it up or you didn’t say exactly what you wanted, you can call right back and leave a message again we’ll pick the pretty one. We’ll pick the one is sounds right and even mix them together if we need to. Don’t feel like you need to be intimidated by calling our listener line because you love to hear your voices, ask your own questions and then put them here on the show. The number is 317-721-7124. Give us a call on the listener line. We like to hear from you guys.
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BRIAN NORTON: Excellent. Jumping into the first question here today, the first question is, people seem to mean different things when they discuss NaturallySpeaking accuracy. What is your take? When they are talking about NaturallySpeaking, that’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking. That’s for voice input on the computer system. There’s been various degrees of accuracy over the years, and obviously those things have improved in recent years. But I’ll throw that out to the group about what people mean when they say Dragon NaturallySpeaking accuracy.
MARK STEWART: This is Mark. I’ll speak to it a little bit. I think of it in relation to working with folks with disabilities and just my experience working with them out in the field. It ends up having its own definition. I think of it in terms of functionality. Voice recognition accuracy is — and there might be some of the things other ways people define it — I’m thinking of voice recognition accuracy. So if out of 100 percent a person has 80 percent voice recognition accuracy, that means 80 percent of the words that they say were interviewed by Dragon correctly, and it typed out what they intended to have typed out, and it also can mean that 20 percent of those words are typed out incorrectly. Now, whether that’s functional and helpful is relative to what they need to do on the job, how much time they have. It’s also relative to how well they are able to use their hands in conjunction with Dragon, and things like that.
What I think you might find interesting, out of my understanding of it, my interpretation of it, from experience in the field, is that, let’s say just for example as a generalization, if I have somebody who is paralyzed from the neck down, full paralysis, and they can’t use their hands at all, and they don’t have a tremendously demanding vocational goal. They just want access to the world. They were very limited in access. The only one of the main ways they can access the computer by voice. They have a strong enough voice or strong enough with some training. Maybe if their voice recognition accuracy is 50 percent, meaning only one out of — one out of two words is wrong, we might end up saying that that’s functional. They might fight through it. We might create some custom commands. We might say that they’ll take it. They might say that they’ll take it. This is something. Okay?
Now trying to come up with an example on the furthest extreme, if you have somebody who has significant but more mild to moderate challenges with their hands, but they can keyboard. And also let’s add on that maybe they’re an executive secretary or something along those lines where they have to have a ton of accuracy. They are under a big time crunch. There is a much higher bar to meet there. If there are any particular functional limitations to Dragon, they are just going to use their hands the best that can, even though their hands are significantly more affected than they used to be. Well, for them, and I see this a lot, they might turn down 85 percent accuracy. That means one and a half out of every 10 words are wrong. They are like, I just don’t want to mess with these corrections. I’m just going to hack away at it with my hands. Excuse the phrase hack away at it, but just chip away at it.
Does that make sense? You guys are nodding. You have those two extremes. I find that then depending on the situation, I need to work through it with the person what they really think is functional for the product.
BRIAN NORTON: I even run into a lot of folks that, when they’re using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, they just don’t realize what they’re getting themselves into in a way, because it’s just different than typing. I always talk to folks when I’m doing evaluations, and I talk about this is a type — when you type, you’re editing as you go, and when you are dictating, it’s really important for you to know what you’re going to say before you say it. They are not ready for it. They tried to talk in short, choppy phrases. They trail off and on. That’s all going to affect accuracy in the end, and if it’s not a high level of accuracy for them right out of the gate, they are ready to give it up, whereas they just need to get used to that being able to kind of know what you’re going to say before you say it so you get the best technician accuracy.
I think there’s a lot of things that play into accuracy when you start thinking about Dragon and that type of access to the computer. Just your microphone can really enhance or take away from your accuracy. A lot of times just the computer itself, you may have a subpar soundcard or insufficient RAM in the computer for it to be able to process information quickly enough. Think about environmental changes, whether you are in a cube or a large office building or you are in your own office with the door shut. Just a noisy environment can play a big part of that as well in taking away or adding to recognition accuracy that you run into.
BELVA SMITH: Your environment too. You don’t need to be in a perfectly quiet environment, but you do need to be in a somewhat quiet environment.
MARK STEWART: We all take those things that Brian was just listed into account and take voice-recognition accuracy really seriously. If I can come up with another example. I’m trying to say that somebody in the middle of the two examples I have before, but it might be a little bit, perhaps somebody with cerebral palsy. They have moderates but very significant challenges with input with their hands, but that is an option. Their speech is affected somewhat. There’s quite a bit of cognitive credibility there. Just picture the capabilities and challenges there. Endurance is going to be a real concern. Their daily life overall probably is — they are going to want to save as much time as they can. Things are going to take long in general. So if, from the start, we try to get them as much recognition accuracy as we possibly can with this product, it’s going to help with frustrations. It’s going to help as much as possible.
BRIAN NORTON: I think that means into — this is kind of what we do for a living. We are out there working one-on-one with folks in their homes and things like that, and we take a software program like Dragon NaturallySpeaking and we put it in there, but we kind of vet all that stuff out with them. We teach them how to talk to and how to use Dragon as best for them as they can. We try to optimize their use of it based on what their needs are and things of that. If you go out and you buy it off the shelf, and you’re not impressed with it, well, there may be a big training piece that’s necessary, and that’s kind of what we do a lot with our folks. It’s a one-off situation with them to figure out what they can and can’t do well, and we feed on the things they can do well and we’ll improvise with the other things that they can’t do well to kind of hopefully give them the best access that they can and help them be as accurate.
Really the ultimate goal is the efficiency piece, how efficient can you be using the computer. It may not be all of Dragon. It may not be all of keyboard and mouse access. Maybe there’s some sort of a hybrid model in between, kind of which were talking about, Mark, well, if you’re going to go ahead and go in there and edit the document, or create a documents, maybe get all of your words out there using Dragon, but then go back and do all the editing with the mouse and keyboard. We kind of look and it’s one off situations with folks where we are really looking at what their specific needs are and building on the things they can do.
WADE WINGLER: I think this question sort of begs the backend question, which is how you make it better. If you guys had to pick three top things that you start with with accuracy, what are the top three things you guys start missing with?
BELVA SMITH: Environment.
MARK STEWART: Microphone and voice control.
BRIAN NORTON: Yep.
BELVA SMITH: That’s two.
BRIAN NORTON: I would agree with Mark. Microphones are really important. There are good, high-quality noise-canceling microphones that you can use. And then really it is the voice control. Learning how to speak to Dragon will give you better recognition. It’ll optimize that for you. Oftentimes I sit down with folks, and they just start rambling off the paragraph. Well, I say let’s just slow it down. Let’s do three or four words at a time and make sure you get it right until you really get used to how to speak to it. Belva mentioned environment. I think it also feeds into it, make sure that they are in the right environment.
BELVA SMITH: I worked with a guy once who wanted to have music playing in the background, not from his computer, but he wanted music playing in the background and then was frustrated that Dragon wasn’t being as accurate as it could be. I said if we turn the radio off, I bet we’ll see much improvement.
BRIAN NORTON: Sure.
BELVA SMITH: Even though it was quiet, it was still playing a role.
Mark, I wonder when you talk about accuracy, is that just the dictation piece of it? Do you also consider how accurate it is in controlling the windows and navigating the menus?
MARK STEWART: Sometimes commands, you almost need to have more accuracy and training. There really are tricks to the way to say commands versus the way to say dictated text. But the commands, you don’t always have that immediate feedback. You have it in the little yellow box, but you don’t have it on the paper to really go back and correct so it can be even more confusing if you don’t get the command right.
Just one other — we are really covering this topic — one other thing that I think is fascinating in this definition of voice recognition accuracy. This can be a wonderful tool for folks with learning disabilities. But if , for one reason or another, a person with severe dyslexia who really also has some real papers they need to write, some real writing on work-related challenges and time crunches , think about how high the bar is going to be for somebody who has severe dyslexia, for example. It’s going to really start to become a problem rather than a help. They can use their hands, right, but they may have that dyslexic syndrome going through their hands. They may have spelling that really hampers them. They may just have a little bit of — again, those overall dyslexics syndromes where writing is a challenge as well. Not always the case, but they may be more fluent by voice, so let’s try Dragon. But if they can’t get the recognition accuracy up pretty high, now you have a situation where, not only did they get the word wrong, but it’s addiction a word that isn’t underlined in red, and they have a learning style where it’s hard for them to identify the wrong word. 80 percent is a pretty high number, but for example, for somebody who is dyslexic, that’s going to be a situation where they’re probably going to say I’m going to go back and use my hands.
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BRIAN NORTON: All right, don’t forget to give us a call on our listener line. If you have a question, please let us know that. You can reach us at 317-721-7124.
Our next question today is, should I pay to upgrade JAWS to JAWS 16? I’m going to look over here at Belva because she’s our vision team lead here at crossroads. I’m going to let her chime in first on this. Belva, what you think?
BELVA SMITH: First, I would ask the user a couple of additional questions. First of all, are you planning on upgrading to Windows 10? Because if so, your current version is not going to be compatible. What is it that you are expecting from JAWS 16? Do some research and find out what 16 is offering versus the version that you are currently using. You can listen to the FS Cast episode 96, and it’s all about what’s new in JAWS 16. That’s certainly a good place to get some information about what you can expect from JAWS 16. And then I guess just really ask yourself, why? What’s making you think that you want to upgrade? And then go possibly download a demo of it and see if it’s doing what you expected it to do. Also consider, would it benefit you to buy an SMA versus buying the software upgrade, because that may be cheaper, actually, than doing the upgrade. I know recently, at one of the conferences they were having, they were allowing everyone who attended the conference to upgrade from any version for only $75.
BRIAN NORTON: Wow.
BELVA SMITH: If you were asking at the conference if you should upgrade, I would probably say yeah, because $75 is pretty reasonable.
WADE WINGLER: It’s like an upgrade amnesty program, right?
BELVA SMITH: Exactly.
WADE WINGLER: By the way, SMA, for folks who don’t know, Software Maintenance Agreement, which allows you to kind of prepay for your upgrade, then get a discount.
BELVA SMITH: Yes. We’re going to talk a little bit more about acronyms later, right?
BRIAN NORTON: Exactly. What do you think about the SMA though? Is it a good idea for them to get? Every time they run out of upgrades, get another SMA?
BELVA SMITH: I guess it depends on the situation. Home users, I don’t know. If you’re working in an office, yeah, maybe. I will say from what I’m hearing from users, though, the last couple of upgrades just haven’t had that much good content.
BRIAN NORTON: Not a lot of meat to them?
BELVA SMITH: Yeah. So they are not very pleased with what they’re getting for the money, so to speak. But now with 16 and Windows 10 , they are kind of making it to where, if you want to use Windows 10, you’re going to have to.
BRIAN NORTON: In my mind, I’m also thinking about the natural progression of upgrades. I would almost think it’s helpful to upgrade periodically just so you don’t get too far behind the times and then just have to purchase the software all over again. You pay full price for it. Because if you get too far off track with upgrades, there is a chance you may have to pay full price again.
BELVA SMITH: I think once a registered user, you are always going to get some sort of discount.
BRIAN NORTON: Okay, perfect.
BELVA SMITH: I think it’s going to be a little bit more, for example, if you try to go from JAWS 3 to 16. You’re going to pay probably darn close to the full price.
BRIAN NORTON: Maybe it was a different software package that I’m thinking of. I’ve run across that in the past where they needed to go out — the version that they had was upgradable anymore, and they had to go out and purchase the newest version of the software. It wasn’t JAWS at this point, but maybe some other software. I guess this also begs the same question, I guess, that you asked about other software too, whether it’s Dragon or other kinds of software. Should you be upgrading periodically? I guess I would say also, the same things you asked, and would follow up with questions, also makes sense as well. What are you really looking to get out of the update? Is it necessary? Is it going to do something? Is there a lot of meat to it?
BELVA SMITH: Is going to be worth the money? I’m a firm believer, especially for home users, as long as what I have is doing what I need it to do, I don’t want to mess with it. But again, if you are in an office environment, or you’re going to school, then there may be that one thing that you need to be able to do that the newest version is going to help you do.
BRIAN NORTON: Right.
WADE WINGLER: I look at the analogy to buying cars almost. I drive a pretty simple car that gets really good fuel efficiency and it’s really reliable. Do I care that it has the highest caliber nav system and sound system in it? Well, I don’t. As long as it’s solid, then I’m not too concerned about that. I think that’s kind of true when we talk about these upgrades. There may be an upgrade that you feel does and how much we do it for something that’s really valuable, but there may be just the right feature that I need to make it totally worthwhile. There’s a lot of “Your mileage may vary” in this, right?
MARK STEWART: What about the aspect of it being certified to work with the next operating system? That’s a question to you guys. How often have you found that, okay, it’s not certified to work with this next operation system, but if it still works, then you fall into the same category? Just keep on using it? Or do nothing to get concerned, like of the companies that sing —
WADE WINGLER: Generally it just doesn’t work. It’s not about being certified to work well, it’s binary. It’s either on or off. It does or doesn’t work
BELVA SMITH: I’m going to go back to what I originally said, which is, am I going to upgrade to Windows 10? Because if I’m going to stick with using Windows 8 or Windows 7, then the fact that 16 is working only with Windows 10, or 16 is required to work with Windows 10, I’m not going to worry about it until I’m ready to upgrade my PC. By then, it may not be 16, it may be 17.
BRIAN NORTON: It’s always that — I find a lot of people are just in a rush to upgrade operating systems and things like that because they are told about the latest and the greatest and most cool things that are going to be available and in a separate system. A lot of times that’s just — it’s a little bit more problematic at the beginning, and it takes a little while for the adaptive software to catch up. If it’s really meeting your needs at this particular point, then I would say don’t upgrade. Don’t rush to upgrade if you don’t have to.
BELVA SMITH: I’ve seen plenty of times where I’ll sit down with an individual, and they’ll say my JAWS is due for an upgrade, and I’ve got one, so let’s go ahead and get it. What am I going to notice different? What new keystrokes am I going to need to know?
BRIAN NORTON: Nothing.
BELVA SMITH: You’re probably not going to tell a bit of a difference.
***4
BRIAN NORTON: So don’t forget to send us a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ so we can get your questions. If you have a question, take a moment to do that right now before we jump into our third question of the day. The question is going to be, I’m interested in purchasing a Livescribe pen for note taking. Can you tell me about the differences between the Echo and Livescribe 3?
MARK STEWART: I know we all can speak to this little bit. Can I go?
BRIAN NORTON: Sure.
MARK STEWART: The initial plan was the Pulse, then the Echo, then the Sky, and the Livescribe 3. With so many things, you would think that it was the latest is the greatest. They come out with a new pen and that should be the one that you should have. I got confirmation from talking with one of their tech support folks less than a year ago that that actually wasn’t the intention from a marketing standpoint. They actually are targeting different population segments. The Pulse and the Echo were pretty much were in the same one. That was the original concept of the pen and the rollout. I’ll put my own little twist on this from what it seems like to me. Then they came out with the Sky pen, which is what really pushed Wi-Fi functionality and also used Evernote as the computer-based software to manage the content rather than their own proprietary software. We had differing opinions on that.
BELVA SMITH: Security was a bigger issue too, right?
MARK STEWART: Personally, I kind of wonder whether there actually simply trying to just go for a home run upgrade with the Sky rather than the Echo, and when the Sky ended up having some differences, they started thinking about the different market niches, who liked the Sky better and who liked the Echo better. I’ll come back and talk a little bit about the specifics of the Echo.
But then they came out with the Livescribe 3. I think at that point they definitely were not simply trying to create the latest, greatest thing. They were really creating a little bit of a different kind of pen to target a different market segment. So the Echo is a pen that connects by USB to the PC or Mac. So is user-friendly in that way. It’s reliable in that way. It uses Echo desktop — it’s now called Echo desktop software to manage the content on the computer. The Sky pen, like I said, partners with Evernote to do that. The Livescribe 3 pen — I’m sorry. In the Sky pen and the Echo pen, the microphone is on the pen or in the device that you connect to it. With the Livescribe 3, it’s set up to be more like a businessman’s pen. It’s supposed to write even better. It doesn’t even have a microphone in it. It uses the microphone on either an iOS or Android device, either a smartphone or iPad or tablet. So you need to have that smart device with you. You use that paper. It’s supposed to give you an excellent writing experience on the paper. And then it uses Bluetooth to middle the transfer to your iDevice.
It wasn’t even a rep, it was a tech support guy that said they’re really targeting kind of the business professional with the Livescribe 3 who walks around with the iPad and wants a really good writing experience and what have you. No problem carrying anything, staying in the same building, going to meetings and things like that. The Echo, they at least eventually realized, is just a very reliable system that works well, that is what a lot of students would want, folks in assistive technology want.
And then the Sky kind of held its own niche even though it can be glitchy at times. Some people just really love Evernote and know it well and can work through with Evernote. They really want the Wi-Fi experience. They want to sync things to the cloud readily, things like that. They don’t mind working through a little hiccup here and there to have that full cloud based wireless experience.
So the question had to do with the Echo versus Livescribe 3. Like I said, the Livescribe 3 microphone on the iDevice syncs via Bluetooth to the device. A little bit of maybe a businessman’s type of target, but I know we use it with students as well. Echo, much more reliable microphone on the pen. It uses software that we really like that handles the content really well.
BELVA SMITH: The Echo is what I have, Mark. To me, that’s been the best one.
WADE WINGLER: This is Wade. I used the 3 and think it’s great.
BRIAN NORTON: We’re going to let you guys arm muscle.
MARK STEWART: Mr. business executive here.
WADE WINGLER: What about price? Are they pretty close?
BRIAN NORTON: I think pricewise they are pretty close. But the Livescribe 3, you need to pair it with a mobile device. If you don’t have one, then the price goes up exponentially. It is expensive at that point.
BELVA SMITH: But you are still using the same paper, right?
BRIAN NORTON: You are.
MARK STEWART: For the assistive technology listener out there, if not the Livescribe 3 for some particular reasons, we have students, we have people with disabilities that love their iPad and they want to go that route. It depends on the type of their work. They may be an indicative with a disability. The Echo certainly is less glitchy than the Sky pen over all. Evernote is wonderful stuff, but I’m going to say — I guess I’ll say it’s my opinion, but maybe it goes beyond that. Evernote controlling the content of the Sky pen has been problematic, not Evernote overall, but Evernote syncing with the Sky pen and working really well in that regard, especially in relation to how well their own software works. My guess is — I could be totally wrong here, but my guess is they were thinking about getting rid of the Pulse and the Echo at one point in time, but that’s not where they are now. They re-upped their software to this Echo Desktop and they also have a new eight gigabyte professional Echo USB connected smart pen out there.
BRIAN NORTON: I kind of look at it like, the differences between Echo and Livescribe 3, with the problems that may arise when you’re using a device like that, it’s a little bit like a wireless printer. When you get a wireless printer, you can connect it to your Wi-Fi, and you can print anywhere but when it’s working, it works great. But you also have the option, when you’re setting up the printer, to do it connected with the USB cable. When I’m using a USB cable, I don’t experience nearly the number of issues but I may have an occasional issue, but it’s going to work much more reliably. When you’re trying to kind of ease the Echo because it syncs through a USB cord to your computer and you manage things right there in front of you versus when you’re using the Livescribe pen and it’s got to grab the microphone from a mobile device, and it has to then interact with software on your mobile device to be able to kind of put content out there, there are just a lot more moving parts and there’s more things in the sandbox that have to be jiving to get it to work the way you want it to. It kind of speak speaks that reliability that you’re talking about, Mark. I’ve experienced that with my folks. It just is a little less problematic with the Echo. But some of those features that I love about the Livescribe 3 do kind of make a little bit of a difference. I love the My Script. It used to be with the Echo, you have to purchase a My Script subdivision which is an extra $30 subscription for that. Whereas that comes built-in with Livescribe 3 where you can actually take your handwritten notes and then have it converted into e-text on your screen. So some of those little add-ons are really helpful.
MARK STEWART: This doesn’t change any of the logic you’re saying there or counter it. I think with eight gigabyte Livescribe Echo that really just came out about a month ago, if my memory serves, I think they may have packaged My Script in there with that as well.
BRIAN NORTON: Really? Okay.
MARK STEWART: My Script, it’s called.
BELVA SMITH: I was just going to ask you, Mark. Do you think when they first came out with the first pen, which was the Pulse, do you think that they were thinking that they were going to be developing and marketing an assistive technology device, or were they just reaching for the general public when they?
MARK STEWART: No. They were reaching for the general public. Before too long, they did bring in an educational theme. In fact, here at Easter Seals, we had their educational trainer come and do a full day seminar. But even after that, they still were many targeting just mainstream, sold it in different big-box stores in stuff like that. It’s harder to find now. It’s on Amazon consistently.
BELVA SMITH: That’s where I bought mine. I just ask that because I know that it’s pretty widely used as an assistive technology device.
WADE WINGLER: I’m looking at Wikipedia here, so consider the source. It says form March 2008 to July 2010, Livescribe sold 400,000 pens. About a third of them are college students, and the majority of them are professionals in the field like journalism, law, or sales. I think that’s interesting.
MARK STEWART: From what I just heard you say, I didn’t hear a specific focus on disability.
WADE WINGLER: I think that falls under college students, is where they probably nestled that.
MARK STEWART: We are talking about the Livescribe pen. Brian, do you remember how you were the one that put me on to the Livescribe pen back when.
BRIAN NORTON: Yep.
MARK STEWART: I know you kind of like telling a story about how you found out about the Livescribe pen.
BRIAN NORTON: It’s been a while. I’m not sure exactly when they came out when they first came out —
WADE WINGLER: It was when they wrote on stone tablets.
BRIAN NORTON: Back in the days of the ballpoint pen. I was doing an evaluation for a college-aged student. He came in, and as is often the case, they already have done a lot of research on the things that they want, and it’s my job to go through and see, do you really need those, are they justified, is there enough justification for us to recommend purchase and things that. One of the things he recommended, or he wanted, was something called the Livescribe pen. I, of course, during that evaluation, had no idea what he was talking about. I made it quite clear to him. I said I will have to do some research because I don’t know what you’re talking about. I ended up doing some research and was kind of blown away by what it can do. It’s a fascinating device. It does a lot of good for a lot of folks by linking the audio with your handwriting and allow you to go back instantly and pull up audio from a very specific point in time. So if you’ve written something down and you don’t know what it is, you can jump right back to that time when you wrote that stuff down and listen to the audio again. It’s a great device.
BELVA SMITH: And all that for not that much money.
BRIAN NORTON: It’s very inexpensive.
***
BRIAN NORTON: Don’t forget to send us an email if you have a question. It’s just another way to get us your questions. You can send those to tech@eastersealscrossroads.org.
Our next question for today is, can you purchase a Ruby XL HD handheld video magnifier for a left-handed individual? Or other similar products? I guess what they are really looking for is a handheld video magnifier that you can use left-handed. I think the reason they ask that is because a lot of those devices have handles that will rotate out from underneath the device, and most of them, if not all of them, that I have come across all rotate out so that they are easy to use with your right hand and not necessarily with your left hand.
BELVA SMITH: It’s because of the button location. You can obviously switch it and hold it in your left hand, but then your button location is going to be off.
WADE WINGLER: I’ve got to tell you. Don’t tell my wife that that is a problem because she’s one of those left-handed people who gets mad when things don’t work in a left-handed world. Let’s just not tell her.
BELVA SMITH: That’s okay. I’ve got a candy grip for her. We can do that left-handed.
BRIAN NORTON: You said the candy grip does rotate out the other way?
BELVA SMITH: You have to specifically flip it, but it’ll work left-handed or right-handed.
WADE WINGLER: So you don’t have to buy a left-handed one? It works either way?
BELVA SMITH: Right.
WADE WINGLER: It’s ambidextrous.
BRIAN NORTON: So there is an option for you. I don’t think you can get the Ruby XL HD left-handed, but there are other handheld video magnifier options that would be available. Specifically the one we know of is the candy grip.
WADE WINGLER: And am I correcting you saying that you can use the Ruby XL HD with the other hand, it’s just awkward.
BELVA SMITH: Absolutely. You’re just going to be using the funds upside down. You can absolutely use it with either hand.
BRIAN NORTON: The handle rotate out to the right most of the time so that you can do that, and you are just going to flip the device over the other side to be able to use it the other way. Again, it just changes the button location.
BELVA SMITH: You’ve got four buttons, so you’re just going to be using them in the reverse order and is going to work the same.
MARK STEWART: Really? Because I’m a lefty. They told me when I was a kid kind of the same thing about right-handed scissors.
BELVA SMITH: Right-handed scissors and left-handed scissors are very different. The Ruby is going to work. You’re just going to be using the buttons differently.
***
BRIAN NORTON: So the next question is an interesting question. I think we can take it different ways. As we all know, and the different feels that we are in, there’s lots of acronyms that mean different things. They are may be understood by different people depending on what their background is, what their education is, what their profession is, and where they are kind of coming at things from. The question is, what does ADL or IADL mean? We’ve come to realize, as we’ve been discussing this question before we hopped on the air and started recording, that there are lots of different ways that people look at these and give them meanings to their acronyms.
WADE WINGLER: I learned that ADL is the Anti-Defamation League, and IADL is the international Association for distance learning. Is that clear?
BRIAN NORTON: Exactly. So coming at it from the disability field, which I’m hoping that’s where they’re coming from when I asked the question and give it to us. Our kind of throw that out to the group. ADL or IADL, and we’ll kind of make this discussion light and fun because there are lots of acronyms that we throw around because they are familiar to us and they may not be familiar to other people.
MARK STEWART: A number of these within the healthcare profession have a foundation in funding. Not all, but some of these do, like activities of daily living. I’m simply going to read a quote. OT’s and PT’s live by these terms and put them in their soap notes and stuff all the time. I’m not an OT, so I’m just going to read something here for the person who asked the question. Activities of daily living are necessary for daily care of oneself and independent community living. It includes using the toilet and grooming, dressing, and feeding oneself, independent community living, includes driving, shopping, homemaking, care of family, work activities and so on. That’s a term that, again, is almost legally defined, and there are many examples in the professions about that. That’s always been considered when someone’s receiving medical treatment and what have you. Of course, they are considering appropriateness of care and the direction of care, but also whether that care can be funded.
WADE WINGLER: The other thing that popped up as we were looking at this, the term EADL came out as well. It just kind of reminded me that there are some glossaries out there for assistive technology terms that are pretty good. I’m looking at one right now that’s put out by the family center on technology in disability. It’s probably a 30- or 40-page document. It includes ADL’s and EADL’s, which is electronic aids for daily living, and goes through a lot of those. We throw around a lot of acronyms and a lot of lingo in the industry that sometimes gets a little bit lost. I think this is a good example of that.
MARK STEWART: There’s one that I used to work with back in the day and the durable medical increments field. Mobility related activities of daily living, which is very accurately defined but generally speaking has to do with adding the mobility component that sometimes is needed to get to and carry out these other activities of daily living and has to do with whether someone may or may not need or receive funding for things like crutches, manual wheelchairs, power wheelchairs, things like that.
BELVA SMITH: I think is important, when you’re using the acronyms, to go ahead and spell it out, so to speak. Nothing frustrates me more than to be sitting in a conference or something where people are just throwing around acronyms like crazy. I’m like, wait, what was that? What was that? By the third or fourth one, I’m just like forget it. I have no idea.
WADE WINGLER: I think that’s important. When I teach assistive technology at Indiana University and some others here, I like to talk about the fact that people use those acronyms as shorthand because it’s easier to say it, but they also use it to kind of established hierarchy in the field a little bit. Sometimes it’s just hand, but a lot of times people use the specialized language to kind of elevate themselves and to exclude others. The fact that you feel that way isn’t unusual. People feel that way a lot. I’ve learned to explain these concepts are things that you can absolutely understand, but let’s build some of the vocabulary so that you can talk with somebody else.
MARK STEWART: Whether they are tied into a funding stream or not, there is a logic to them. There is a functional aspect to them that is interesting to note. By the way, for the listeners, our funding streams, Medicare is not a primary day in, day out funding stream for us. In our evaluations, we have to pay careful attention to certain criteria. That’s why we are kind of talking around it and looking up some of these terms that OT’s and PT’s purely use day in and day out.
BRIAN NORTON: I like what all the mentioned earlier, just putting yourself on the other side of the table when you know those different things. Over the years, I’ve been educated on some funny ones that are out there. Wade, who is in the room here, we’ve been working together for a long time. He’s the first one that explained what a TWAIN driver really stood for, and what a POTS line really stands for.
WADE WINGLER: Technology Without An Interesting Name, and Plain Old Telephone System.
BELVA SMITH: You taught me that too.
BRIAN NORTON: You can have some fun with these acronyms as well, versus just getting some really solid background in disability fields.
MARK STEWART: One I keep trying to remind myself about, Wade, is EADL’s that you said, which was —
WADE WINGLER: Electronic aids for daily living.
MARK STEWART: I’m thinking the latest version of Cook and Hussey — sorry about where this is going.
WADE WINGLER: Sorry for doing what you were just talking about.
MARK STEWART: Taking over or they are trying to get it to take over for —
WADE WINGLER: ECU.
MARK STEWART: ECU’s, or environmental control.
WADE WINGLER: That’s the way we do things here on ATFAQ. Don’t think that it’s lost on me that we are having discussion about acronyms on a show that we’ve called ATFAQ.
BELVA SMITH: Exactly.
***
BRIAN NORTON: If you guys will take a moment, try to give us a call on our listener line. The listener line is 317-721-7124. If questions have popped into your mind as you been listening to the show, take a moment to give us a call. We’ll look forward to hearing from you.
Our next question is, I am blind and use a braille display to help me read text messages and emails. If I purchased and Apple Watch, will I still be able to read these with my braille display?
MARK STEWART: That’s a great question. I’ve not actually have an Apple Watch in my hand.
BELVA SMITH: You can if you get back to your device. It won’t communicate from the Apple Watch to the braille display. But if you get back to your iPhone, then you’ll be able to read it on your braille display. Hopefully with a little bit more time, they will make it so that the braille display will communicate. You’ll get the vibration from the watch to let you know that you need to get your device because you’ve got a text or you got an email. So you’ll get that notification of it, but to actually read it, you will have to get back to the device. We are hoping that will change. Just keep watching AppleVis to see, because I’m sure that as soon as it does, that will be one of the first places that you can find it. Is it okay if I go ahead and give them the web address where they can? Email accessibility@apple.com if you are a braille display user and you want to use the Apple Watch and let them know that you want to use the Apple Watch with your braille display. Hopefully they are going to get enough of those that they will get that fixed for it soon.
WADE WINGLER: It’s worth noting that we are recording this show just ahead of the iOS 9 update. We are expecting a lot of stuff to happen there. By the time this is out, it may have been solved.
***
WADE WINGLER: And now it’s time for the wildcard question.
BRIAN NORTON: Don’t forget to send a tweet with your hashtag #ATFAQ if you have a question. Also, if you think of it, please give us a review on iTunes. That’s just a way to help other people find the show as well. You can go there and look at our show and pop in a review there.
Our next question is the wildcard question of the week. This is where Wade gets to throw a question at us that we haven’t had a chance to see. I’m going to throw the reins over to him and let him ask it.
WADE WINGLER: I love this part of the show. It’s always fun. Today I think it’s kind of an easy one. I’ve hit you with some tougher ones recently. What cloud services do you use the most, and which one could you not live without? Any cloud services. It doesn’t have to be an assistive technology want, but in the cloud.
BRIAN NORTON: The cloud storage place that I use often is Dropbox. That’s the first one I was ever introduced to. I find it to be very user-friendly, very easy to use. I don’t really do any other cloud services. I don’t do Google Drive, I don’t to all of the other things that Microsoft offers and what not. It’s all Dropbox for me.
WADE WINGLER: I would say just cloud storage. All kinds of cloud services.
BRIAN NORTON: I was thinking about my bank. I go into online banking. Please, if you are listening, don’t hack me. I do online banking, and of course I can’t live without that. I get to pay the mortgage.
BELVA SMITH: Is that cloud services or is that just online services?
WADE WINGLER: I think you get into a fine line about what it is or not there. We even do the show notes on Evernote. It’s another cloud-based service that we use all the time.
BELVA SMITH: I was going to feel really bad about my answer, because my answer is simple. Dropbox is the only thing I use. However, I do online banking. I do online shopping. But I don’t consider that cloud based, because I feel like my bank has got that information safely stored away for me, hopefully.
BRIAN NORTON: It doesn’t seem like it these days.
BELVA SMITH: But when I put something in to Dropbox, that is truly just out there in the cloud somewhere where I have no idea where it is. That’s how I define the difference. I do no other cloud stuff.
MARK STEWART: Really similar for me. Dropbox, but I’ll add Carbonite online backup. It allows your stuff to get out of your home, off your desk. You arguably could avoid death that way. Well, physical theft from an individual. Now you have to worry about being hacked. It’s a good addition to having a hard drive backup.
BRIAN NORTON: That’s great.
WADE WINGLER: As I look across, I got my MacBook here on the desk in the studio. As I look across my icons in the dock, there’s tons of cloud-based stuff in here. I’ve got my chrome browser, which is Gmail, and there are some Google documents in there. I use Omnifocus for my task management. That’s a cloud-based service. I got Evernote. I got email. I got the calendar. Those are all cloud-based services because they are at least synchronized across multiple platforms. And then I see Keynote and Numbers and [Pages], so I’ve got those things that I’ll use. I cloud in the background to kind of prop them up. And then I see Apple Music as well which is also a cloud-based music service. And then I see iMessage.
BELVA SMITH: Wait, you are calling Pages and Numbers, you’re calling that —
WADE WINGLER: They store it in iCloud.
BELVA SMITH: They store it on your computer.
WADE WINGLER: I’ve got it set up so that they store across iCloud. That way I can open up my Pages document on my phone or my iPad or my Mac. More of them are cloud based then not when I look at the tools that are missing all the time. Like you guys, I use Dropbox all the time. I’m going to say that, for me, Dropbox is the winner, because not only do I put documents and stuff in there that I want to get access to, but there are also four or five tools that you Dropbox is sort of a synchronization engine behind the scenes. I use an app called text expander that helps me type faster and put things in. It uses Dropbox to synchronize. This morning Evernote reminded me to back up my Evernote account. I pack it up to Dropbox. I’m using Dropbox all day long. Sometimes I don’t even realize I’m using Dropbox because it’s kind of doing it behind the scenes.
MARK STEWART: I intentionally do a number of things cloud based because of the direct client services. Of course you do direct client services and have a long background of that. A lot of the things you are referring to are for your administrative and your outreach kind of roles.
WADE WINGLER: When I do have client data — that’s a really good point — I use our exchange server which is secure for that kind of stuff. I don’t put client data and Dropbox or Evernote or Omnifocus.
BELVA SMITH: Maybe that’s why you use more of it than we do.
WADE WINGLER: It’s very possible. You guys have some predictions based on HIPAA compliance.
BELVA SMITH: I think it’s interesting that we three are doing the same thing.
BRIAN NORTON: I would like to use more cloud services, but HIPAA keeps me from doing that. I’d like to do a lot more with Evernote than I can right now because I can’t put client data out there.
WADE WINGLER: I guess I opened up a can of worms, didn’t I?
BRIAN NORTON: We’ll have a meeting afterward.
WADE WINGLER: I’m getting the looks around the room.
BRIAN NORTON: Great question. Again, thank you everyone for your participation and for listening. Here’s how to find our show. You can search for assistive technology questions on iTunes. You can look for us on Stitcher. Or visit us at www.ATFAQshow.com. Also please do take some time to send us your questions to our listener line. That’s 317-721-7124. Send a tweet at hashtag #ATFAQ, or an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We really want your questions. Thank you for all of those that have participated in the past. If you’ve got additional questions, please send them our way. Thanks for being a part of the show.
BELVA SMITH: Thanks for listening and send us your questions.
MARK STEWART: Thanks, everybody. See you next time.
WADE WINGLER: See you later, alligator.
WADE WINGLER: Information provided on assistive technology frequently asked questions does not constitute a product endorsement. Our comments are not intended as recommendations, nor is our show evaluative in nature. Assistive Technology FAQ is hosted by Brian Norton; gets editorial support from mark steward and Belva Smith; is produced by me, Wade Wingler; and receives support from Easter Seals Crossroads and the INDATA project. ATFAQ is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. Find more of our shows at www.accessibilitychannel.com.
