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ATFAQ027-04-11-16
Show notes:
Panel: Brian Norton, Mark Stewart, Belva Smith, and Wade Wingler
Q1. iPad and computer mounting options for someone’s wheelchair?
Q2. Any good recommendation for an Macbook charger cable?
Q3. What is the most accessible thermostat (Siri and VoiceOver compatible?)?
Q4. Any information on the BrailleNote Touch and what should be considered when purchasing a note taking device?
Q5. Any suggestions for computer access when the person has both a vision and mobility impairment?
Q6. Wildcard: What was your first computer? How was your computer use then different than now?
——-transcript follows ——
WADE WINGLER: Welcome to ATFAQ, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions with your host Brian Norton, Director of 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: Hello and welcome to ATFAQ episode 27. I want to welcome our panel today. I have Belva Smith. She is everything low vision and beyond with assistive technology. That’s quite a title, right?
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WADE WINGLER: Low vision and beyond. You are like the Buzz light year of assistive technology.
MARK STEWART: Excellent.
WADE WINGLER: That’s awesome.
BRIAN NORTON: Mark Stewart. You want to say hey?
MARK STEWART: Hey everybody.
BRIAN NORTON: He’s everything and beyond with mobility and cognition stuff.
WADE WINGLER: He is the Woody of assistive technology.
BRIAN NORTON: And I also have Wade Wingler in the room. He is the host of the popular show AT Update. I want to welcome weight as well.
BELVA SMITH: We should let our listeners know that we are recording first thing in the morning instead of the afternoon.
WADE WINGLER: We had a little scheduling thing so we are in the office before anybody else is here and any of us are really fully awake. We will let everyone in the audience determine whether or not this show is a good idea.
BRIAN NORTON: I like it.
MARK STEWART: This punchy thing is kind of fun.
BRIAN NORTON: Kind of wiping the eye boogers out of my eye to make sure I can see the screen. Anyway. Just for the new listeners we have on the show —
WADE WINGLER: Who happened to that already.
BRIAN NORTON: I want to let people know how the show works. This is a question and answer show. We encourage people to send us their questions. We have several different ways for you to do that. You can send them to us through our listener line. That is 317-721-7124. You can email us your questions at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Or send us a hashtag on Twitter #ATFAQ. We collect those questions and post them to the group here in the room. But we also really encourage listener feedback. As you guys listen to our shows, if you have additional information, additional answers for the questions that are asked, chime in. You can also leave us that information on our listener line to, through the email, and also send through twitter as well. We want to encourage a large listening group so we are looking for that feedback as well. To jump in today, we do have some feedback from one of our listeners about a question we had an episode 20. I’ll play that.
SPEAKER: This is great Hayes calling about ATFAQ. I’m calling to respond to a question that was an episode 20 about labeling the applications. The user that called in was a blind user. While you can’t actually relabel the application, you can relabel what voiceover reads, voiceover label. Two finger double tap and hold on the application you want to rename and that will relabel the voiceover and you can change it to be whatever it is you want it. He mentioned there were two library apps, so he could relabel those to be his church library and the other one to be the other thing he was asking. Two-finger double tap and hold, and that brings it up.
BRIAN NORTON: Thank you Greg for calling in and giving us some feedback on that. I believe in one of our later episodes we did have another individual call in and help us through that and give us some information. I think that same step that you mentioned to be able to relabel those icons out there on your iPhone for both over to read and not necessarily to change what it actually says or looks like on the screen. Thank you for that feedback. I appreciate it.
WADE WINGLER: We love to hear from you guys.
***
BRIAN NORTON: Our first question is, what is a good, reliable, durable wheelchair mounting option for an iPad. Along those same lines, what about mounting a laptop to a wheelchair as well? I’ll throw that out. Looking for reliable mounting options to be able to attach something to the person wheelchair. I’ll throw that out to the group.
WADE WINGLER: And all eyes turned to Mark. He is our mounting guru.
BELVA SMITH: Wake up, Mark.
MARK STEWART: We kick this around all the time. Let me skim the service to start with. There is something called the mountain mover which perhaps – it is not perhaps a matter of best but a matter of application. We’ve had a lot of success with the mountain mover. Maybe a little bit more of a modern highly engineered new age around and more recent years kind of mounting systems perhaps people haven’t heard of. There is the Daisy mounting system that is up so many people for so many years still a real adjutant player. Not just talking about me, the RAM mount is one you’ve had a lot of success with Brian. Universal mounting arms, something called link lock that we work with a lot in creative ways that perhaps people haven’t found out about. I’m taking the approach of skimming the surface to start with because this is a really important topic. There are gooseneck’s, semirigid systems, and I think we would touch on whether it is very rigid or pliable and the trade-offs of that. I’ll speak to mountain mover and maybe I’ll catch my breath and you will come in with some things or others. So the mountain mover is a system that we liked a lot. It’s a small company, but from an engineering standpoint you would think it was some mega company that had a whole bunch of R&D to start with. I don’t know exactly what their history is but I know it’s very impressive engineering. It is a system that can mount to essentially any wheelchair. They will work really hard with you on that. Sometimes it takes some effort in working with the company themselves. They are proud of getting the mounting system to do any type of chair. There is some universal nature to the mountain itself. It is the type of system that can swing away and be on the side and then you can unlock it and swing it into different positions in front of the person so there is some ability for adjustment. Then when you start talking about the user interface, we really like that because picture a plate system that can easily detach to the arm system. Even on top of this plate mount, you can quite easily interchanging number of plexiglass type services for feeding, for an iPad, or a smartphone or laptop. You can purchase more than one of those and snap those on and off really easily or an assistant can. Swing away in a real smooth, high-tech way. You can have more than one arm so you can do a hard copy reading a book kind of mount and then also a laptop mount. You could have an iPad and laptop. So there’s some nice creativity there. It’s actually BlueSkyDesigns.com. Their flagship product is the mountain mover and certain applications of that. They will do custom builds. We’ve worked with them very closely a number of times. We had a lot of success and a lot of fun doing a custom mount of an all-in-one computer —
BRIAN NORTON: I think it was a Dell XPS 18.
MARK STEWART: 18 inches, 19 inches. So they made a custom mount for that. We had a lot of success with that.
BRIAN NORTON: I find with a lot of these companies, because they are smaller companies they do a lot of custom stuff. You just have to give them a call and ask. They are more than willing a lot of time to work with you to find and make something that will work best for you. I find a lot of times when you start talking about iPads are consistent, you have a couple of different models that are consistently the same size and same weight and dimensions. But when you talk about laptops, they are all over the board. A lot of those laptops – I know when you go to the Daisy mount or the data list amount that they make, you have to take many measurements. There are three or four pages of different types of measurements. The thickness of the chassis, the screen, where things connect, you need access to the ports, all those things you have to take measurements for on that laptop to be able to send it off to them for them to custom make something that will hold your laptop. The last thing you want is for the laptop up in front of you are off to the side for it to be falling off and breaking. So they make it very customizable every time, especially for laptops. Not necessarily for the lighter weight devices like an iPad.
MARK STEWART: Perhaps as we go just a little deeper into the types rather than having a separate composition of rigid versus semirigid. For example, both the mountain mover and the Daisy mount are much more in the rigid category. For the clinicians out there or users you know what you’re dealing with, you really need to think about do I need something. Am I rough on something? Is it because of my disability? Am I rough on things because of my job or how I zip around the community? Those are two examples of mounting systems that can take quite a bit of abuse. As you were discussing sending off for a custom laptop mount, it’s interesting. Mountain mover is a little bit more user-friendly as far as their laptop mounts, again they can do a custom. If you said I need this locked down solid, they would work with you on it. But it is a little bit more of a laptop system that can handle a number of laptops, a little bit of the bungee cord with the plexiglass —
BRIAN NORTON: More universal in its application.
MARK STEWART: But then Daisy mount, a little bit more difficult up front but those things are locked down solid, so if you are bumping things all the time you want to keep that thing in mind.
BRIAN NORTON: You mentioned Ram mount, universal switch mounting arms, or Bogen magic arms. There are lots of different mounting options for just about any device you might want. I’ve even used it for handheld magnifiers for folks. I’m looking at Belva. When someone needs to hold up a small magnifier up and over a product for something to be able to see things consistently all the time at the same distance, we’ve made Bogen magic arms or custom rims mounts to be able to make that work for folks. Lots of different mounting options with lots of different options, lots of different clamping mechanisms depending on the type of wheelchair you have, type of service you are trying to clamp it to.
MARK STEWART: Universal mounting arm is —
BRIAN NORTON: It is actually something that was originally designed for —
WADE WINGLER: 35mm cameras.
BRIAN NORTON: 35mm cameras to hold lighting in place for folks. It’s really interesting. There are two solid arms and in the middle there is a joint. That joint can be locked down. When you like that with the lever or a knob, the entire surface of it becomes very rigid and you have mounting plates on one side which you can get many different sizes, rectangle, squares, triangles. You have a clamp on the other side to be able to connect to a flat surface or a around the surface. It is actually pretty flexible, multi-use type of device, so Bogen magic arm or universal switch mounting arm is what those are called. Ram mount ironically I think are more for —
WADE WINGLER: Cop cars and ambulances were their original purpose.
BRIAN NORTON: Bicycles and other kinds of moving vehicles.
WADE WINGLER: How would you stop an iPad on the front of a police officer’s car where they will be all kind of drama and physicality involved. That’s what ram mount’s primary business is for. But it works really well when you’re mounting that stuff to a wheelchair especially when you’re talking about someone who has CP or a lot of specificity and that heavy-duty situation you described earlier. I love ram mount. I get excited about that stuff.
MARK STEWART: I want to go after one other, and you put it on to me. The link lock. When I say link lock, the listener who hasn’t heard of it doesn’t know about it. Unlike some of these other mounts where I don’t know what I just described because it is like ink and logs –
WADE WINGLER: Like Legos.
MARK STEWART: As far as what you can do for it. I think that is something of a good example of for the more gentle user with a little more control, it will hold in place if the weight isn’t too much. But it certainly is an example of the flexible, if you give it a pretty good whack, it will go totally out of position. But the opposite of that is you can do anything you want with it. What are some creative visualizations of what you can do with link lock?
BRIAN NORTON: Link lock — I cannot go to a machinery shop where they have blowers pointing at something to be able to keep things clear. There are individual pieces that link and the lock together, hence link lock.
WADE WINGLER: Imagine a garden hose that was made out of segmented pieces, and that garden hose was frigid and you can put it in any position and it would stay there.
BELVA SMITH: is and that the one that is a little round ball that was like a magnet. So it looks like those chocolate malted – you are with me, Wade. Those malted milk balls, but they just stick together and you can form it however you want. I don’t have a lot to add to this, but I do have something to say. I think before this question can be answered, are there to other question that had to be asked? I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. What type of wheelchair are using? Because do all of these work with any wheelchair or only with specific wheelchairs? And the number two, what is it that you need to do with this iPad? Do you need it to come out of your way? What kind of environment are you going to be using it in?
BRIAN NORTON: I think what you will find is they will amount to really any type of wheelchair, but you have to be very — you have to choose the right pieces. There is the right mounting option for a particular wheelchair. A lot of wheelchairs have a side rail or some sort of a seat real underneath the seat. Many of these mounts will connect to that. There are certain pieces and parts you had to order very specific to a certain type of wheelchair. What’s the best mounting option? That’s when you would seek out an expert and have them do an assessment because they can help you pick the right pieces, the right parts that had to go into the mount to make it connect well
MARK STEWART: I’m not sure if I’m answering a question with a question, but I just – the question is always asked, in other words – it’s kind of a team approach. You may want to check with the primary person that helps with the wheelchair bending themselves. You may want to check with the OT and PT. Driving, is it going to cause some other type of problem? You are solving one thing but now can they fit into the car to drive?
***
BRIAN NORTON: This next question is from Jane. She sent us a tweet. Are there any good recommendations for a Mac book Pro charger? It is the iStyle. Although this isn’t necessarily an AT question —
WADE WINGLER: If you can’t charge your MacBook, you can’t use your AT.
BRIAN NORTON: There you go. For me, when I think about if people are asking us for good recommendations for in my book Pro charger, I would almost send you back all the time to the Apple Store to buy one that is made by them, for them.
WADE WINGLER: A real Apple OEM charger.
BELVA SMITH: I have found that buying the generic chargers for anything Apple is never a good idea. And taking back many that I have but for my phone. They say it will work with an iPhone but as soon as you plug it in you get that warning saying that it is not.
MARK STEWART: I think the situation that came up a month or two ago with our clinical work with a teammate of ours. I look out for clients and try to stay up on the stuff. But you remember me sitting in the meeting. Set the question up with the teaser, wait a second, you mean – I understand that there are knockoffs from China and stuff like that that don’t work, but things that come in an iPad package, sealed with the sticker, sealed in the shrinkwrap plastic may totally be fake?
WADE WINGLER: We have had that happen.
BRIAN NORTON: Twice. It happened twice.
WADE WINGLER: Where we ended up helping a person with a disability obtain an iPad. It didn’t come directly from the Apple Store, it came from a reseller. It was one of those situations where the plastic wrapped box had a knockoff product in it. It’s happened.
BELVA SMITH: Even with a Dell laptop, you have to use the charger that is specific with that Dell laptop. Again, if I am looking for a charger from a laptop whether it is a MacBook or Dell, I’m going to go to the manufacturer to make sure I’m getting the exact one.
BRIAN NORTON: Because there are different MacBook chargers. I recently upgraded my MacBook, and the old charge I had doesn’t work on the new MacBooks.
WADE WINGLER: Different wattage, different physical connections.
BELVA SMITH: And using the wrong one, even if it does fit, can cause damage.
BRIAN NORTON: I would definitely say check with the Apple Store. Go to an Apple Store or go to the website and look for the correct one. They will be able to give you the right advice and the right to charger.
WADE WINGLER: I think it is worth conversation. I think the reason this question comes up and that there are knockoffs is that stuff is expensive. You buy a computer and you say I cut the power cord or I got it smashed into something and you think I’m going to buy one, you will spend 20 or $30. You get there and you are spending 70 or $80 on a charger, sometimes more for that kind of stuff, which I think raises the question of that is why people make the knockoffs and why there are all those alternatives out there. I’ve had the same experience where I’ve gotten the knockoffs either because I was trying to save some money or I just got one by mistake and it was a problem. When we are specifically talking about a month charger, I don’t think there is an option. I think you pretty much need to go to Apple and by the true Apple product. Or if you’re buying it from eBay or Amazon, you want to make sure that you’re getting the real thing. I’ve seen a lot of Amazon sellers where it will say this is a real Apple product but in the comments, the buyers will say it’s a knockoff. I found one exception to this recently, not with MacBook chargers but with other cables. When you’re talking about a lightning cable or others, reason I started buying the Amazon Basics for USB and HDMI and even some USB-C. and having a really good luck with Amazon basics cables. They are a lot less expensive than the Apple stuff, are a little higher than the chief knockoffs, but I found those cable to be pretty good quality and I haven’t had any trouble with those. They don’t make a MacBook Pro charger, but those other cables you think are expensive, I’ve had pretty good luck with.
BRIAN NORTON: They do make iPad chargers. Those cables are really nice and a lot less expensive.
MARK STEWART: Sorry if I’m setting you up, Wade. I think you may have some really good verbiage on this. You mentioned wattage. With a computer, some of them are 60 watts versus 90 watts. I have run into the thing with five milliamps so often, and some of the company say you have to use ours because – but they all seem to be five milliamps. Is overcharging an issue?
WADE WINGLER: I think I know where you are going with that. With Apple products, they are smart. They usually aren’t going to allow you to plug in something that will give it too much juice. They are going to shut it down. But have found some real differences between the different kinds of chargers, especially with an iPad or something that has a big battery in it. It would take substantially longer if you’re not using the right adapter for it. In fact, I have a charger that is charging in my office right now called an anchor. It is designed to give you a lot of battery life. You can charge a full iPad three or four times off of this. I know that if I plug it into one of my lesser powered adapters, it takes about two days to charge it. If I plug it into the right adapter, the one that has the right amount of wattage and milliamps, it will charge in about 10 or 11 hours. It still takes a long time but I really do think that is the main difference you will see, is just a matter of time it takes for them to charge based on the kind of adapter you use.
BELVA SMITH: I think it is going to eventually wear on the battery if you’re using an improper charger.
WADE WINGLER: It’s always the best idea to use the right one.
***
BRIAN NORTON: Our next question is an audio question. We’ll go ahead and play this for you pick
SPEAKER: My name is Greg Hayes and I’m calling for the AT FAQ show. Great show by the way. I saw in episode 11 that you talked a little bit about the Honeywell thermostat and its accessibility. I was wondering if you had any advice as to what’s the most accessible Honeywell versus the Nest versus perhaps the EchoBee 3 sold by Apple for voiceover uses and for being able to use Erie to change the temperature and so forth. That’s what I’m wondering.
BRIAN NORTON: The first thing I think we need to hash out for folks is there is something called HomeKit enabled accessories that are able to be used with your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touches. Essentially what those allow you to do is be able to control different appliances. It thermostat, lights, other kinds of things, locks, smart plugs and much more. They have to be HomeKit enabled accessories. You can go – I kind of did a little bit of research on this. You can go to Amazon and you can put HomeKit enabled accessories and find out lots about many different types of products that are available for folks. Many of these things, the Honeywell and other Echo Bee is a thermostat. Greg seems to be asking specifically about thermostats, how to change the temperature using voiceover and Syria and other kinds of things. I believe Honeywell makes it thermostat. The Echo Bee is actually one that is sold by Apple through Apple. Those are both two examples of thermostats that you can use worse over to be able to change temperature, turn lights on and off, so there is lots of things you can do. But they have to be a HomeKit enabled device.
BELVA SMITH: I think he is specifically looking to control his temperature with Siri. To do that, you need to be able to use something that is HomeKit compatible. I don’t believe that Nest – maybe it is now – originally it wasn’t sold as a HomeKit ready product, but it can be used but you do have to have the HomeKit app, which I think is $14.99. I found a YouTube video that walks you through step-by-step how to get your Nest thermostat added to that HomeKit home page where everything is listed. It is quite a process to get it added, but you can get it added to that home screen. Apple prefers that you use the Echo Bee just because I think it is their product.
BRIAN NORTON: I found a YouTube video about using a secondary or third-party type of app. It is called home bridge. You can get your Nest to be enabled through the home link stuff.
BELVA SMITH: So if you already have your Nest and are wondering how to control it using Siri, I would suggest going to YouTube and googling how to use Siri with your Nest. You will find how to videos I’m sure.
WADE WINGLER: You are cracking me up, build up your you just did a total internet world thing. You said go to YouTube and Google it. The word Google has been synonymous with search. I just love that you did that.
BELVA SMITH: Search? What’s that? You Google it, right?
BRIAN NORTON: I think it is safe to say, even on our show we don’t endorse any particular product over another, and thermostats aren’t necessarily where our — are easy term Mark has used before, and I will house.
BRIAN NORTON: I have kind to them a couple of times. Because they are not necessarily work or educational, we don’t get to do that kind of thing too much.
WADE WINGLER: I’m mostly frustrated I spent a ton of money on a heat pump furnace unit and spent an extra $400 on this touchscreen thermostat programmable interface, and I won’t say the brand because I hate it – I thought that’s no big deal, I will swap it out for a Nest because I’m hearing good things about that and it is compatible. The first thing that they said to me was this one won’t work with the Nest the way this is wired. You can only use our own system. I don’t know how much of that is hubbub because they don’t want me to switch it out and how much of that is manufacturers deliberately aborting those thermostats. I would love to dig into this a little bit and learn more because I want my wife to be able to change the thermostat from her app in the bed instead of getting up and around downstairs and doing that.
BELVA SMITH: That is an important bit of information. You cannot just go out and buy any of these thermostats and just go home and plug it in. You have to make sure that it matches. I know this from the one Nest that I did get to do. It does have to match your wiring set up on your existing thermostat.
BRIAN NORTON: It’s funny to me. We talk about was controlling your thermostat and all these things which would’ve been several years ago a $7000 home automation suite, where now you run out to Lowe’s and you have several options for yourself sitting on a shelf where you can pick them. They are becoming commercially available. We have an assistive technology lab here at Easter Seals crossroads, and we have WeMo adapted lights, plugs, smart plugs where we can voice control them. Or we can control them through an app through our iPads. This whole world of automating your environment —
WADE WINGLER: It’s all coming together.
BRIAN NORTON: It’s one of those universal designs that is helpful for everybody. But for folks with disabilities who have difficulty switching on your lights, if you’re hot you want to be able to change your thermostat, those kinds of things. How much readily available is it today? It’s changing the face of that world at this point.
WADE WINGLER: I’m excited to see which companies are going to become the leaders of that. Is it going to be something like Belkin and WeMo where there is this standalone set of products that pull it all together, or is it going to be something more like your security system in your home or cable company who is plucking all of that stuff together and making it happen. We are kind of in the wild West of home automation right now and are starting to see some convergence. It will be interesting to see in the next 5 to 10 years what that looks like.
MARK STEWART: I will contribute with the acronyms. Especially because it’s early, I was sitting here making sure I’m going to get it right. Kind of researching, it still known as but it’s an older term, environmental controls, this is kind of the area we are in. I guess the most modern academic acronym that you should know for research purposes is electronic aids to daily living EADL’s. I did it.
WADE WINGLER: Congratulations. One more cup of coffee.
***
BRIAN NORTON: Our next question is from a college student who is blind. He asks, I’ve been looking for a portable notetaking option for my schooling. What do you know about the all new BrailleNote Touch from humanware? What should I consider as a look into purchasing a portable notetaking device? Just with the mounting option where we all started staring at Mark, we are going to stare at Belva.
BELVA SMITH: Nothing. I’m not sure that it even been released yet. I looked on their website and it says to preorder. To me, to preorder me that it’s really not even available yet. I know they were just at CSON and it was a hot topic at the conference. In reading about it, I’m not seeing that it does any new or anything different than any of the other note takers. The only difference is its touchscreen, meaning that there is no keys. Like an iPad or any touchable device, your braille buttons are not going to be physical buttons. They’re just on the screen. I would suggest if you’re used to using the Perkins style keyboard, I would suggest you try to get your hand on one of these just to see. They say it can be fast and stuff, but I would think that in the beginning it would be a huge change to have that tactile keyboard gone. How sensitive is it going to be to touch? Mark is giving me this totally crazy look.
MARK STEWART: So you’re totally blind and don’t have a tactile feedback?
BELVA SMITH: Right.
WADE WINGLER: So the experience I’ve had with this is, first of all, I had some of my blind friends email me or call me a few weeks ago, CSON was happening. They said are you at CSON; go check this thing out because there is a ton of the buzz happening in the black community. I think the thing that is important about this is it uses a touchscreen for the braille keyboard input cost so those traditional six or eight dots you have to type into braille is not on touchscreen. I’ve seen some apps recently covered on the other show where you put your forefingers on this touchscreen like you would on a Perkins style keyboard and it figures out where your fingers are. As you type, it just kind of constantly calibrated self to find your fingers. You just type on this like you are pretending to type on a Perkins style keyboard, and it will find your fingers and go ahead and allow you to do that. It’s like a virtual Perkins braille keyboard. The other thing I think is new and different about this – I’m looking at their product list. Then a bunch of stuff that it says is new and different about it. It will be certified and available in the Google Play Store. It is a mainstream application, something that they will make available in the Play Store, which may not change the ability for any person who is a user of assistive technology to access it, but it may improve the awareness among the mainstream community about the fact that there is this braille thing in the Play Store and maybe start to get the rest of the world thinking about this.
BRIAN NORTON: It is an android tablet.
WADE WINGLER: It is an android tablet device.
BRIAN NORTON: It’s not a proprietary device like many of the other note takers are. It is an android tablet that gives you the access to the Play Store.
BELVA SMITH: I don’t think it is fair to call it a tablet. It’s a notetaker.
WADE WINGLER: So it is a proprietary device but it is proprietary hardware that has a built-in braille display on it, but then it has a tablet computer sitting right on top of it.
MARK STEWART: I’m going to make a comment going back to some of Belva’s concerns. I’m not current with the so they may have fully figured this out, but from a motor control learning standpoint, if you learned with tactile feedback and you know how to type but now you go to an interface where you don’t have that feedback and that reinforcement, there might be a slippery slope towards inaccuracy and sloppiness where you may need to even go back and train again on a physical keyboard before you can come back and use this.
WADE WINGLER: I’m smiling because this is the same thing that happened when blackberries turned into an iPhone where there was that physical tactile keyboard, although small, and people switch to an iPhone and struggled with that. In fact, I was meeting with a colleague last week. I met a guy who has an iPhone but has it in a case that I think gives them battery power and also looks exactly like a blackberry keyboard. He’s basically retrofitted his iPhone to get back to that tactile keyboard. I think that is a really good point. I think there is a transition that people have to manage.
MARK STEWART: Belva, if you don’t have the visual feedback when you are blind —
BELVA SMITH: That’s what I was going to suggest to this person. We still don’t know what the price on is going to be either. Before you try to purchase this thing, I would really suggest getting your hands on one in trying it out because you may find that you will be more satisfied with the tactile keyboard. Again, I don’t know. They are making it because they believe that it’s going to be the new and greatest device. I do know that it was probably one of the biggest things talked about at CSON.
WADE WINGLER: They are clearly taking a swat at the iPhone with this, is what they’re trying to do. The other thing about the Google place door is it will support the Google place door directly and allow you to directly download accessible third-party apps. It still going to use key soft which is what Humanware note takers have been using as an operating system for years, but it sounds like they’re loosening up the proprietary nature a little bit and allow you to go to the Google place door.
BELVA SMITH: You said they were taking a swat at the iPhone. I think they are really taking a swat at the iPad. We’ve got so many of our blind users who are using the iPad with a braille tactile display. I think they are trying to put it into one device and basically give the user the same experience.
MARK STEWART: We are being “what if” as we have the right to be, but Humanware is a legitimate company that is dedicated to folks with low vision and blindness. They are thoughtful and we like them.
BELVA SMITH: They’ve been around a long time. Their goal is education and employment.
BRIAN NORTON: The braille note has been one of the best note takers out there for a long time. To the second part of his question, what should he be looking for as he thinks about these things? We talked a little bit about the braille note, the braille note touch. What are some key characteristics of notetaking devices that he should be aware of as he looks at what he might purchase down the road?
BELVA SMITH: I think he will find that any of the notetakers are going to give him the function or functionality that he’s going to need for note taking, emailing, word processing and Internet connection and that type of thing. They all pretty much have the same type of features. They may do them in a different way. For example, the humanware uses keynote where freedom scientific, I think, uses .dox, basically Word. What does he need to do with it is what he needs to ask yourself. Can he get access to his electronic books? Most, all of them, will give him access to his electronic books. The ability to record lectures, should he need to, they are all going to give them that ability. Email, Internet. I would say get your hands on them and feel them because they do all feel different. They all have the same type of function but they do all feel different. The buttons are in different locations. Button location is huge to some folks because they don’t want their thumb bumping a button that it should be. Look for your —
BRIAN NORTON: Your local assistive technology act project.
BELVA SMITH: Exactly. Try to get your hands on one and try to use it to see which one feels best in your hands.
BRIAN NORTON: If you’re looking for your local assistive technology act projects, you can go to www.eastersealstech.com/states, and you’ll find a listing for every state and province that has an assistive technology —
WADE WINGLER: Territories, not provinces. That’s Canada.
BELVA SMITH: I should say that humanware also have the Braille Sense U2 Mini which does the same functions as the other notetakers but is half the size. If size is important to you, you might want to look at the Braille Sense U2 Mini. I have had a lot of folks that are not comfortable with the many because they have larger hands and using the mini is not as comfortable. But then I have had some folks who have really tiny hands and find that the mini is the best fit for them.
MARK STEWART: We are talking about independence here, the considerations we are talking about are the most independent options for taking your own notes, which is great. But of course just in case she doesn’t know, get with her local disabilities services office at her school as well. She may have access to other student notes that another student has taken and things like that. Those could be scanned into the computer and then read back with OCR software.
WADE WINGLER: She might find all kinds of resources that the accessibility at the University.
BRIAN NORTON: That’s a great point.
BELVA SMITH: I would definitely encourage them to do that, but I have found that most of the folks that I work with really want their own notes in their own words. Maybe having them both ways is also something that could be important.
MARK STEWART: I hear that in your voice and I think you are even going to more. In all of our specialities working with the transition since going off to college, we — anyone chime in and tell me if I’m wrong — even if we had a really good solution with regards to assistive technology, we still encourage them to go ahead and use other resources like getting the notes from other students. But one of the reasons we don’t just fall back on that is that despite everybody’s best efforts, at the most supportive universities it seems to be kind of hit and miss. It’s kind of based on some other student, some other 18-year-old student taking notes and saying they are going to take good notes. They get sick and now the student doesn’t have good notes at all.
BELVA SMITH: I think you’ll find the cost to be somewhat similar in devices. Again, I don’t know how much they will charge for the new touchscreen one, but I would guess that it’s going to be close to the same price. I can’t imagine that they would try to make it more expensive because any of those notetakers are not cheap.
BRIAN NORTON: They are very expensive.
BELVA SMITH: That’s one reason why the iPad and braille many displays have become popular because you can get both of those for a third of the cost of a notetaker. And easy to get repaired if you need to.
***
BRIAN NORTON: Our next question is I am working with someone who has MS and is very low vision. We are working on computer access right now. Any suggestions on software that would work for her? Her voice quality okay, at best, and at times lower than others. She can do switch scanning with a single switch as well. Any solutions?
MARK STEWART: I’ll jump in. I know this has to do with vision and things like that but I’ll jump in with a qualifier here. I’m looking at this person – I look at the last sentence about – this isn’t everything they’re asking about, but I’m looking at she can do switch scanning with a single switch as well. I’m picturing – perhaps a wish a picture someone who the MS has hit pretty hard.
BRIAN NORTON: It sounds like it.
WADE WINGLER: Not a lot of upper extremity movements.
MARK STEWART: So if we are talking about MS, the MS is actually conservation to get to the point where it is perhaps versus a secondary condition. With MS and all of the different successes with medications and things these days, we say – when you say someone has MS, and maybe they had it for 10 years, we really need to meet them. It may be very mild or they may be totally in bed and can’t move. It seems to vary. Sometimes they got it last year and the progress is extremely fast where it doesn’t with someone else. With this person, I’m kind of picturing that it hit them pretty hard.
BELVA SMITH: I feel the same way when I hear someone say a person is low vision. What exactly does that mean? How is their vision affecting what they can see and can’t see? I really don’t know. It could be a situation where we need to look at adaptive software or it could be a situation where we just need perhaps larger screens and some adaptations are made to the visual display in Windows or Mac or whatever it is they are using. It’s a tough question without sitting with the individual and actually seeing what works and what doesn’t work.
BRIAN NORTON: And I think you mentioned, for low vision we might start with large screen monitors making sure can they see that, then we might move in to magnification it, maybe even screen readers. The first thing that pops into my mind at this point when they talk about some physical access issues to the computer and some vision access issues to the computer, we talk about J-Say as a possible option, but then they mention that voice quality is okay at best.
MARK STEWART: You know that I’m challenged to see if we can get voice to work especially if they are a single switch scan in.
BELVA SMITH: I hear you say J-Say and I’m like, gosh, that’s such a complicated set up to try and use. It’s more frustrating –
BRIAN NORTON: Than it’s sometimes worth.
BELVA SMITH: Absolutely. I don’t want to go there unless I absolutely have to. I have been there with a young lady who was in a situation kind of what we have described here, very advanced MS, very low vision. HoNestly I think she finally got to the point where she just didn’t even care about trying to use a computer because we can get her to a level of the voice recognition that was acceptable.
BRIAN NORTON: It sounds to me, and maybe this is where we throw it back out to our listening audience, it sounds like we are looking for something that is maybe a single switch access software but also one that voice is what is going over. So with the low vision, you can hear and get audio feedback for what is being focused on the computer as you are going with the keyboard with that single step scanning process –
BELVA SMITH: Many years ago, Brian, you and I worked on a case with a young gal that was using — I can’t remember —
BRIAN NORTON: She was using easy keys with window eyes, which is a screen reader. It works fairly well.
BELVA SMITH: It worked fairly well for her.
BRIAN NORTON: May be some of our listeners have some other feedback or other options.
WADE WINGLER: This is a tough question. MS is tricky in general. There are a couple of things I think are worth mentioning. This is the point Belva made in a previous question. What are we trying to accomplish? Is she writing a novel, going to college, basic communication, just making a grocery list? What are we trying to accomplish, because that would change the level of fitness and the kind of access you might think about. The other one is, MS is a degenerative disability. Whatever is working today is likely to need to change a son vision or voice or fine motor control as the disease progresses. It’s one where you have to build in some of those adjustable tools that can grow as the situation changes.
MARK STEWART: Is this a reasonable fix that can last? Endurance with MS is a big factor. The person is going to really want to make it work, so they will sit in that session and push. They don’t know how much they have pushed themselves, cognitive fog. These are all variable. It’s one of these conditions, you can kind of always — if you work out, your muscles get sore as many listeners know. There are certain conditions in a much more medical kind of way you can cause an exacerbated response. MS is one of those things where, if you do really push too hard or if we set the person up with challenges to learn assistive technology and stuff too much, it kind of pushes their body and mind too much, it might even pull them out of remission into having full-blown symptoms.
BELVA SMITH: I say the same thing about the vision. We are talking low vision and we don’t know what that means, but we could cause so much of visual strain that it causes a negative effect. The vision is likely to continue to change throughout the time as well.
MARK STEWART: Good days, bad days.
BELVA SMITH: Exactly what Wade said, what we find works today may not work —
MARK STEWART: Zoom text and the auditory enhancements and the focus enhancements, Brian, with single switch to get around — did I oversimplify?
BRIAN NORTON: Zoom text has keystrokes to be able to pan across the screen to be able to see different things.
WADE WINGLER: It will follow the focus. I’ve had experience is where that sort of gets dicey. I’m going with a big monitor first. I’m going to get the screen big first before I throw any medication.
BELVA SMITH: I agree because I’ve not had good success with that. That’s why I said low vision, the first thing I’m hoping is we can do larger screen and the Windows enhancements or the Mac enhancements.
MARK STEWART: And some good voice training and voice input.
WADE WINGLER: There is so much going on with that question that we can spend half a day with that person and come up with a great solution.
BELVA SMITH: And I would probably say let’s try this. I wouldn’t probably come up with a confident solution, but let’s try this to see if it’s going to work.
BRIAN NORTON: That may be the best answer. Reach out to your local assistive technology act project. Find out what your resources are. Do they have a professional who can do an assessment? Are you in a K-12 environment?
BELVA SMITH: How do I find them?
BRIAN NORTON: You can go to www.eastersealstech.com/states and you will find your local project.
MARK STEWART: With all concerns that I’ve arty been mentioned, I sit here and think that listeners may be curious about J-Say.
BRIAN NORTON: J-Say is essentially a product that sits in between JAWS and Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional. It sits in between them and makes them play nicely in the sandbox, or marries the two together, and allows you to be able to voice input but then here auditory feedback on what’s happening on the screen. It’s a great product.
WADE WINGLER: In some situations it’s the only option.
BELVA SMITH: And it is very limited to what it can do, but it can do simple word processing, emailing, Internet research. But if you’re trying to use it with any type of a third-party program, you try to get away from Microsoft Word or Microsoft Outlook and you are really not going to have a good experience.
BRIAN NORTON: I think you have to be careful because it is very expensive. You will end up paying $1000 for JAWS and you will end up paying $5- or $600 for Dragon professional, and then you have to pay another $4- or $500 for the actual J-Say to sit between those. It gets to be a very expensive proposition. You want to make sure that, what Belva mentioned before, may be the last resort or the only resort that would work, but make sure you have looked at other options to make sure.
BELVA SMITH: And you have to be using certain versions, builds. You may have to buy the newest Dragon NaturallySpeaking, you are really going to use an older build of the software, the same thing with JAWS.
BRIAN NORTON: Lots of T’s to cross and lots of I’s to dot as far as that installation process just to get it to work.
BELVA SMITH: You know this, Mark: you have to be very aware and very precise as to what your commands are to get Dragon to do what you want it to do. It’s even more so with the J-Say program. Your typical commands don’t necessarily work but you do have to be very precise. It’s got its benefit and it has its drawbacks. I will say that I have only worked with five people the entire time that I’ve been doing this that are using it. Two of those five are very successful with it in doing word processing and emailing. None of those five were using it in a work environment. A work environment would be a very challenging situation, not to say it can be done but it would be challenging.
BRIAN NORTON: If there are folks listening and want to chime in with any feedback, that would be great. We would love to be able to help identify some resources for folks. Maybe as a secondary option for them, reaching out to the local assistive technology act project would be a great option for them. And if you want to send us your feedback or if you want to ask other questions, you can get a hold of us in a couple of different ways. You can give us a call on our listener line at 317-721-7124, or you can give us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or you can send us the hashtag ATFAQ and we will collect that and hopefully be able to play it on our next show.
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WADE WINGLER: And now it’s time for the wildcard question.
BRIAN NORTON: So our next question is the wildcard question of the week. This is where Wade throws us a question.
WADE WINGLER: We are going to put on our old school computer chops and think back to the very first computer that you ever owned or used at a regular basis. The first computer that was yours or the one at school or wherever that you used. I want to know what was the very first computer that you really started to use. Then my question that goes along with that is, what did you do on that computer? Was it wordprocessing, or was the Internet research? How is that different from today? Are you still doing the same kind of stuff on your computer or are you doing something different? Why are you guys laughing?
BRIAN NORTON: I was thinking back to why I use the computer initially and it was to play Space Invaders. My dad had a Zenith with two 5 1/4 floppy disk drives in the front. You had to load in both discs to be able to get the Space Invaders monochrome monitor. I played that all day long for the first six months that he had it until he started really getting into it and using it for other kinds of things. It was a big Zenith computer and it was massive, with a little 15 inch monitor. But the fact that it was in was just huge. So I played Space Invaders on that computer. Even when I got to college – I do note that spent several years ago now – computers were just starting to gain popularity. They just started having computer labs on the college campus. I didn’t even use a computer very much in college. People were just really getting into email. I would always go to the library and typed out on a typewriter my papers instead of going to the computer lab and actually using whatever version of wordprocessing software they had at that time, probably WordPerfect.
BELVA SMITH: Probably.
BRIAN NORTON: I was typed out my stuff during college. That’s when I first started getting exposure to real exposure, to what a computer could do was college.
MARK STEWART: For me, in college there was the transition from a brother word processor.
WADE WINGLER: Had one of those.
MARK STEWART: It’s how you did papers, stuff like that, sort of the electronic typing. I don’t think in college I did a typewriter. And then I took a DOS computer course and learn some basic stuff and thought I was a programmer. That was a Computers 101 course. My senior year, you would go to the lab and write that papers on a computer and things like that. Pretty much wordprocessing. You tried to do a little bit of research and things like that. I guess the other – Pong and Atari.
WADE WINGLER: Breakout.
MARK STEWART: I seem to remember a lot about Windows 95.
BELVA SMITH: For me, it was quite embarrassing at the public library when I went to find the card catalog to look for a book that I wanted and the lady said to me, oh, I’m sorry; we have it all on the computer over there. You can find it on the computer. I was terrified because I’ve never put my hands on a computer. So I went and got my second greater and said, hey, do you know how to look a book up on the computer? He was like sure, mom, we do it all the time. He goes over, boom, boom, in here it is. The teachers were saying that the kids should have a computer at home, so as much as I thought it, I said yes we should probably go and get one. Yet I knew nothing. They knew way more than I did. So the kinds of things that I did on that first computer. It was a Hewlett-Packard, the size of a suitcase, and a little bitty 15 inch monitor. I crashed it a lot. I will never forget the first time the little “You have committed an illegal” something. It was 10 o’clock at night and I’m thinking what’s going to happen. I’ve done something illegal. Windows 95 was really good at doing that because it was Windows 95. It was really good at doing that. From that, just lowering the structure, then it was introduction to the Internet and what we could do with the Internet. From that it was learning screen readers. It was that quick that I went from just learning the structure to the Internet to screen readers. I was probably better with screen readers then I was email for many years.
WADE WINGLER: For me, it was a long time ago. I became interested in computers early on. I like to tell the story: my folks mortgaged the family farm – not literally, but almost — to buy me a RadioShack color computer. That was probably in the very late 70s or very early 80s. I was probably nine years old or so when I got my first computer. The thing about that computer is you had to hook it to a television. It didn’t have a monitor. When you turned it on, it beat up and said okay, blank, blank, blank and it expected you to type in basic programming language because it did have software loaded onto it. In fact, it didn’t have any nonvolatile memory, didn’t have any storage on it, so whatever you typed in would be there and to shut it off. When you shut your computer off, it went back to having no software in it again. I remember I used to get this magazine called Rainbow magazine that was just thick as a phonebook. You would type in programs. I would spend all day on Saturday typing in and debugging a program so that I could play it on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, start all over again typing in hundreds and hundreds of lines of code. I lived on a farm out in the country where the power wasn’t always good, so the light would blink off and I would lose hours’ worth of programming on the computer. Then I got an audio cassette recorder, a 60 minute audio cassette recorder that would allow me to say the programming on the cassette player. So you plug this thing inand it squealed like a fax machine or modem sound, and that’s how you would load programs or save programs on that. A good program would take one or two 60-minute cassette, front and back. That means it would take an hour or two to load a program so that you could then — what I did first was play video games. I like to play simulators like lemonade stand. I remember political race simulators, I think it was probably one of the Reagan elections back then.
BELVA SMITH: I can’t even imagine.
WADE WINGLER: It was amazing. I still have one by the way. Not my original one but it is in the garage. I bought it in a grunt still not too long ago. I have to keep an old analog TV to hook it up to because it won’t look to anything other than analog TV. The most exciting thing I did was eventually I got a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive and would save my files. I got a word processor called Scripts It. It was a physical cartridge like a videogame cartridge that would plug into the side of his computer and it would allow me to write. I remember starting writing back then on this RadioShack computer and printed it off on a dotmatrix printer, which is ironically what I use computers mostly today: I write and save and retrieve information. I never was very much of a videogame player, just a little bit, and I’m still not cop but I remember writing and saving and printing words on the computer way back in the late 70s, early 80s.
BELVA SMITH: I remember we got the encyclopedia with ours. I thought that was —
WADE WINGLER: Encarta, Microsoft Encarta?
BELVA SMITH: Yes. I thought that was so interesting because I grew up at the encyclopedia that took up the whole book shelf. Now here we have this on the little CD.
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.
