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Panel – Brian Norton, Belva Smith, Tracy Castillo and Josh Anderson – Q1- wireless voice amplifiers, Q2 – voice-input options, Q3 – accessible point-of-sale systems, Q4 – text prediction for Chrome Browser , Q5 – video magnifier options , Q6 – Wildcard: Portable Storage Devices
————-Transcript Starts Here——————————-
Tracy Castillo:
I have a question.
Josh Anderson:
Huh?
Tracy Castillo:
Like what?
Brian Norton:
I’ve always wondered.
Belva Smith:
What about?
Speaker 4:
Do you know?
Josh Anderson:
I have a question.
Speaker 5:
I’ve always wondered.
Tracy Castillo:
Like I have a question.
Brian Norton:
I have a question.
Belva Smith:
Oh, I have a question.
Tracy Castillo:
I have a question?
Speaker 6:
I have a question.
Brian Norton:
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 let’s jump into today’s show.
Brian Norton:
Hello, and welcome at FAQ Episode 111. My name is Brian Norton and I’m the host of the show, and we are so happy that you’ve taken some time this week to tune in with us. We have a great lineup of assistive technology questions for you today. But before we jump into the questions, I just want to take a moment to go around the room and introduce folks who are sitting here with me in the studio. And today we got a full house. I think we’ve been playing some musical chairs last couple of weeks or last couple of recordings, but we have a full house today. I’ll start with Tracy, Tracy Castillo.
Tracy Castillo:
Hey.
Brian Norton:
Here’s our in data manager. And so, Tracy, do you want to say hey to folks?
Tracy Castillo:
Hey, it’s Tracy Castillo. How are you?
Brian Norton:
Good, good. And you know, I don’t know. I think maybe we did. But do you want to give folks just a little bit of an idea what your role is here with the INDATA Project?
Tracy Castillo:
You want me to talk about my favorite thing?
Brian Norton:
Yeah, please do.
Tracy Castillo:
Oh, yeah. I’m Tracy Castillo. I’m with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads. I oversee the device or utilization program, demo, and loan programs.
Brian Norton:
Perfect. Excellent. Well, we’re glad you’re here in the seat with us today.
Tracy Castillo:
That was so difficult.
Brian Norton:
And then Belva Smith is our vision team lead here at Easter Seals Crossroads. Belva, you want to say hey?
Belva Smith:
Hey everybody, I’m glad to be back. The last time you guys were all together I was at LEGOLAND.
Brian Norton:
Nice.
Josh Anderson:
I wish I was at LEGOLAND.
Brian Norton:
What was your favorite thing at LEGOLAND?
Josh Anderson:
The Legos?
Belva Smith:
Just watching the grandkids have an amazing time. Every one of them had so much fun. It was amazing.
Brian Norton:
That’s awesome. Nice. That is awesome. And we also have Josh Anderson. Josh is the manager of our Clinical Assistive Technology Program and the host of AT Update. Josh, you want to say hey?
Josh Anderson:
I wish I was at LEGOLAND right now. [crosstalk 00:02:38]. I like you guys. [crosstalk 00:02:40].
Belva Smith:
You know what, I highly recommend it. I highly recommend it. Give Penelope another year, and-
Josh Anderson:
When she’s two you think she’ll like LEGOLAND?
Belva Smith:
Oh, yeah.
Josh Anderson:
Nice.
Belva Smith:
Oh, yeah.
Brian Norton:
Excellent. Well, in my name is Brian Norton. I’m again the host of the show, the director of assistive technology here at Easter Seals Crossroads, and again, we’re super excited that you guys are here tuning in with us this week. I think we do have a good lineup of assistive technology questions. Want to make time for just a few things for new listeners. If you’re new to us and new to our show, I want to tell you a little bit about how that show works. We receive feedback and come across various assistive technology related questions throughout the week. We would love to hear from you as our listeners, as I’m sure you guys are in the weeds with folks, helping folks with accommodations, other kinds of things, or maybe you’re looking for solutions yourself. We have a variety of ways for you to get in touch with us to let us know what your questions are about assistive technology.
Brian Norton:
And also as we go through the questions that we have lined up for us today, if you have any additional information, answers or whatever, let us know as well. And ways to get ahold of us. There’s a few of those. The first would be our listener line that’s 317-721-7124. You can also send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or if you are on Twitter, you can also send us a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ. We monitor all of those lines of communication. And, again, use those to be able to put together our show each week.
Brian Norton:
I also want to let you know, if you’re talking to friends or other folks, there’s great ways to be able to find our show. You can find us on iTunes atfaqshow.com, through Stitcher, the Google Play Store. Or if you just want to go to our website, it’s eastersealstech.com as well. That’s our INDATA Project website. You can find us there too. So, just wanted to give you those ways to be able to find us. So, this week, usually we jump into a little bit of feedback and I didn’t get necessarily any feedback from our last show. But I did want to mention that we did get an email from Beat Spot, and they come out with ratings periodically, and I’m super excited just to mention that we got an email from them saying that all three of our podcasts were rated in the top 10 assistive technology podcasts in the world, and so-
Belva Smith:
Wow, everybody lean forward and pat yourself.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah.
Belva Smith:
That’s impressive.
Brian Norton:
In fact, AT Update was their number one assistive technology show.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah.
Belva Smith:
Wow.
Brian Norton:
ATFAQ is their number six, and then Accessibility Minute, if you guys haven’t heard of that podcast or not, that is number nine on their list. And so, super excited that the three podcasts we put out of here at Easter Seals were recognized in that way. And so, super excited about that. Check out our other podcasts if you haven’t already, AT Update is a once a week podcast. And so, that comes out on Fridays. Also, Accessibility Minute is a once a week podcast. And so, you can check that out on Friday as well.
Josh Anderson:
Brian, how long is Accessibility Minute?
Brian Norton:
It is a minute.
Josh Anderson:
Nice.
Brian Norton:
There’s some change on there every once in a while. I think the one I’d recorded for last week was a minute 16 seconds, but it’s very quick, usually about a product or something that’s just interesting happening in the world of assistive technology. But usually just hitting the highlights of a particular product is what you’ll find with that one. And then ATFAQ, again, that’s a biweekly podcast. That’s what we’re doing here today. So you can check us out and check our show out every other week. And so, we’d be happy to know that you guys are taking advantage of all that good information that’s coming out through the podcasts that we do here at Easter Seals. So, without further ado, we’re going to jump into our questions this week.
Brian Norton:
The first question, we’ve had this type of question before. Maybe not necessarily this format, but I find folks are looking for this type of device a lot. The question is colleagues, I’m looking for a device, a voice amplifier similar to Chatterbox but wireless. The customer has some mobility issues and would prefer to set the amplifier on a table. She’s going to be working as a teacher, but it needs to be mobile as well not just for a single classroom.
Brian Norton:
And so, the Chatterbox for those that aren’t familiar with what these devices look like, I talk about them in the way if you ever go to a show where there’s some sort of a guy up there selling you knives or looking at pots and pans. He’s usually got a fanny pack with a speaker on it. And he’s got a microphone up around his ear for folks to be able to hear him. Basically, that fanny pack with that speaker has… Basically, it’s producing his speech. It’s got a mic, and it’s amplifying his speech, so folks in the room can hear them, and that’s kind of a little bit what Chatterbox is designed for.
Josh Anderson:
It’s kind of like a one person PA system.
Brian Norton:
It is, yeah.
Josh Anderson:
It is really what it is.
Brian Norton:
And really helpful for folks with low voice volume. So, if you can’t talk that loudly, maybe you talk in a whisper helps people hear you well. And so, we’re looking for a wireless voice amplifier.
Belva Smith:
How much is the Chatterbox?
Brian Norton:
That is a great question, Belva, the Chattervox. Let me look [crosstalk 00:08:05]-
Josh Anderson:
Chattervox not Chatterbox.
Belva Smith:
Chattervox.
Josh Anderson:
Chatterbox is a bar down.
Belva Smith:
So, the reason I asked that is because the first one that I pulled up that has really good ratings. I’m not even sure how to say it, but it’s Z-Y-G-O. So, Z as in zebra, Y as in young, G as in George, O as in Oscar, wireless voice amplifier $450.
Tracy Castillo:
What?
Belva Smith:
I know that’s extremely expensive.
Tracy Castillo:
Ouch.
Belva Smith:
But-
Josh Anderson:
That’s a little pricey.
Belva Smith:
But it does have great reviews, and it sounds like it’s everything that they’re looking for.
Brian Norton:
Is it [crosstalk 00:08:42]-
Belva Smith:
It is wireless.
Brian Norton:
Okay, great. Where do you find that?
Belva Smith:
At A-C-C-I-I-N-C.com.
Brian Norton:
Okay, great. You said it’s 450?
Belva Smith:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brian Norton:
The Chattervox, I looked that up is $285.
Belva Smith:
Okay.
Brian Norton:
I don’t believe it’s wireless. I believe it’s wired in to the speaker down below. I also want to throw out there, there’s one called AN-MINI. It’s a MiniVox Lite public address system. Really small looks like to be able to just sit on a table. It’s obviously on the go. It is wireless. And I mean, it’s super small guys. I don’t even know how to put it. It looks like smaller than a can of Diet Coke, a 12 ounce can of Diet Coke.
Josh Anderson:
You’re looking at your can of Diet Coke [crosstalk 00:09:35]-
Brian Norton:
I know. I’m looking at it, and I think maybe that’s probably about the same size. Yeah. So, MiniVox Lite. It gives you 100 decibels of clear sound, connect up to two wireless microphones.
Belva Smith:
This one actually comes with two microphones.
Brian Norton:
Oh, does it?
Josh Anderson:
Nice.
Tracy Castillo:
Well, how much is that one?
Brian Norton:
I’m looking right now. So, the MiniVox that I just talked about-
Belva Smith:
While you’re looking at that, Brian, I would like to just say too that this would be a great time to try to look for your local AT Act, and see if they have any of these devices that you could try because I’m sure they’re all going to be very different in their own way. I would assume that your voice would have a lot to do with which one may be appropriate for you. I’m sure, I don’t know what the number is, but I’m sure that we have at least one if not two, or three of these in our library.
Brian Norton:
We do. Yeah, we actually have probably-
Belva Smith:
It’s probably-
Brian Norton:
… two or three, three or four.
Belva Smith:
Yeah. It’s probably the perfect kind of thing that you would really want to try before you buy. So, definitely one thing that I always do, especially when I’m shopping online, I always look for return policies. So that if I get it and I’m not happy with it, I want to know that I can return it. I also make sure that there is a phone number that I can call so that if I get it and I have technical issues with it, I can call somebody and say, “Hey, how come or how do I?” Just because when you’re spending this kind of money on a piece of technology, you want to make sure that you’ve got good support behind you?
Brian Norton:
Right. The one I was mentioning that audio MiniVox lite is $366.
Belva Smith:
Okay.
Brian Norton:
So, kind of in the middle there between-
Belva Smith:
So, right around 500 bucks, and you should be able to find something that’s good.
Brian Norton:
Right.
Josh Anderson:
So, jumping just a little bit cheaper.
Belva Smith:
Okay. Cheaper could be better.
Brian Norton:
I always like cheaper.
Josh Anderson:
I’m was going to say if you go to Amazon, and just look up personal voice amplifiers, there’s a bunch of them.
Tracy Castillo:
There is.
Belva Smith:
I know, I found pages and pages of them on Amazon.
Josh Anderson:
And a lot of them are… I mean, and really, you got to look at reviews. I see one with four stars, but at 17 reviews. You could put 17 reviews just from your friends on there if you really wanted to.
Tracy Castillo:
I don’t know if I have 17 friends.
Josh Anderson:
Well, maybe not Tracy, but anyone else. You at least know seven people.
Belva Smith:
I do want to say too that sometimes cheaper isn’t always bad.
Josh Anderson:
No, no, no, no, not at all.
Belva Smith:
Yeah.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah, not at all. But if it’s a difference, it’s one of those things where how much better is it for 10 times as much? So, you have to look at that, but there’s all kinds and a lot of them are company that I’m going to completely butcher if I try to read. It’s G-I-E-C-Y, but they make different voice amplifiers. All kinds of wireless ones. It says there these are actually kind of… It even says, tour guides, coaches, trainings things like that. So this may be something that would help the person is at least going to give you that amplification. Now, I don’t know if the voice is really soft or if it’s going to be able to get out the kind of noise that they actually need.
Brian Norton:
I think the real challenge with those is because they’re smaller portable voice amplifiers, really the speaker within the device has to be a good quality speaker for it to really get you the full tones of that person’s voice. But I’m going to venture it’s Giecy maybe, G-I-E-C-Y?
Josh Anderson:
I just pronounce everything, man, so I’ll just go with whatever you say [crosstalk 00:12:45]-
Brian Norton:
Yeah, it’s 50 bucks, right?
Josh Anderson:
Yeah. We have the 50 bucks there. There are other ones that are even like 40 bucks, ones that are 60 bucks, and they all kind of look about the same. And then also, kind of just looking at this, essentially this Giecy, we’re going to go with that.
Brian Norton:
Giecy.
Josh Anderson:
Somebody wants to call in and tell us we said that wrong.
Brian Norton:
Giecy sounds like Dicey, but Giecy.
Josh Anderson:
That works, it works totally for me.
Tracy Castillo:
[inaudible 00:13:03].
Josh Anderson:
Please direct all complaints to Brian.
Brian Norton:
There we go.
Josh Anderson:
But it kind of got me thinking, what about a better Bluetooth speaker? Because really, it looks like this is a Bluetooth speaker that’s just connected to this headset via Bluetooth. So what if you just had a nice Bluetooth speaker? I don’t know how you really connect the Bluetooth headset straight to the speaker, but there’s got to be a way.
Tracy Castillo:
There has to be.
Josh Anderson:
Or even through the computer. I don’t know. I’m sure there’s some different ways there. But really, yeah, because you want to get that sound out. You brought up a good point with just having the speaker. Integrated Bluetooth speakers can be very expensive for good ones.
Brian Norton:
Right. But you get quality sound.
Josh Anderson:
You get high quality sound and the individual might already have one, so maybe that’s something else to think about.
Brian Norton:
Right. Very true.
Josh Anderson:
Or even you might be able to hook a Bluetooth speaker into one of these devices in order to give it even more sound, and make it a little bit louder.
Brian Norton:
Yeah. I’m looking at the one, this Giecy voice amplifier, one of them, and they may have Bluetooth versions of them, but it looks like the microphone is a UHF microphone. So, it’s got some sort of frequency there. But I would venture a guess you probably could have a Bluetooth microphone somehow connected to a Bluetooth speaker whether that’s through a computer or through your tablet or whatever, and be able to have it produce the speech you’re looking for. I don’t know. That would be interesting to look at. I wonder if anybody who is listening to the podcast has ever done something like that. That would be interesting. So, I’d love to hear from you if you have.
Brian Norton:
I would, as Belva mentioned earlier, check out your Assistive Technology Act. To do that if you’re not familiar with who they are in your state or territory. So, here in the United States, I know if you’re an international listener this may not apply. But here in the United States we have Tech Act projects or Assistive Technology Act projects in every state and every territory. And if you go to eastersealstech.com/states, it’ll take you out to the page where you can actually look up your state and the contact at that state. They’ll tell you where they’re located, give you their phone number, and give you the person that you can call to be able to look into borrowing one of those devices for 30 days. And then really then making an informed choice. Is it really the right tool?
Brian Norton:
Because I do think, if you’re going to use one of those devices, you really do want to make sure it’s going to be loud enough. It’s going to be clear enough for the folks who are listening to be able to use that. And so, those were a couple of them. Again, just to hit those, Chattervox was the one that was mentioned in the question. Anchor Audio MiniVox was one, and then Belva, what was the one that you mentioned earlier as well?
Belva Smith:
Well, it was… Let me get back on mic. That was the Z-Y-G-O wireless voice amplifier. I found that at www.acciinc.com.
Brian Norton:
Awesome. And then Giecy was the one from Amazon, G-I-E-C-Y. So, you can check those out. Hopefully those will be helpful to you. I would also just encourage folks who are listening if you do have experience in augmentative communication, particularly with these amplifying voice amplifiers, we’d love to hear from you about what your experience is with those. If you do know of a wireless one, I think that’s the specific thing that’s unique to this question. I’d love to hear from you, and let this person know if you’ve had some other experiences or have found good products as well. So, to do that, you can give us a call on our listener line that’s 317-721-7124 or you can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. I’d love to hear from you. Thanks.
Brian Norton:
All right. So, our next question is I have a client who has developed numbness and tingling in her fingers that makes typing challenging for her. We tried Dragon, but most of our applications at work are not compatible with Dragon, so that is not an option at this time. Are there other voice input programs we should consider? As I was reading this question, the first thing that would pop into my mind is when you mention not compatible, trying to figure out what exactly that means. Is it not compatible because Dragon doesn’t get access to the things that need to be clicked on or moved around? Is it not a standard application like Microsoft Word or Outlook or those kinds of things? That would help bring a little bit of clarity to the question.
Brian Norton:
But just thinking about other ways to help folks who have numbness and tingling in their fingers. One of the things that I’ve run across that I thought was kind of unique and interesting. There’s something called Mobile Mouse, which is really kind of a… It’s a downloadable app that basically turns your iPad, or your watch, or your iPhone into a wireless keyboard or touchpad and really so much more as well. It does quite a few things. It’s compatible with Mac and PC. But I was kind of struck with how much-
Belva Smith:
You still got to touch that though.
Tracy Castillo:
Yeah.
Brian Norton:
You do, but sometimes I think that numbness and tingling gives you the… I think, if you think about Zero-Force keyboards and other kinds of things, that’s where you’re not having to press a key down. Because I think the touch, as you touch keyboards in my experience, having to press down on something, you don’t get that sensation that you feel when you’ve got numbness and tingling. So, with Zero-Force, you’re still typing, but you’re not having to touch the keys.
Belva Smith:
I think-
Brian Norton:
Does that make sense?
Belva Smith:
I think there’s several questions in this show today that just make me feel like it’s important for us to remind everybody that-
Brian Norton:
About evaluations.
Belva Smith:
Yeah. Nothing that we recommend or speak about in this is actually a recommendation. A job site evaluation for this individual would be key to success, in my opinion. Because, yeah, Brian, you’re right. The first thing we would want to know is what does it mean that it’s not compatible? How is it not compatible? Would training be able to change that? And could you do, I don’t know, lots of things can be done with Dragon. Brian’s one of the first people to mention the scripting piece where I’m one of the last people. And that’s because he knows how to script and I really don’t. But also because I feel like scripting is just so risky, because any change and/or update for the software changes all the scripting or can. But the first thing I think, for this individual is just the simple $20 or under slip on typing [crosstalk 00:19:38], where they’re really not using their fingers. But yeah, they are still using their hands.
Josh Anderson:
But using the palms of your hands.
Belva Smith:
Well, you just slide it on. They make them on all different shapes and sizes, but you just slide a little cuff over your hand that has a pointer coming off of it, like a pencil. And then basically you’re just moving your hand around and using that pointer to actually press on the keyboard. Possibly just relocating the keyboard into a different position.
Brian Norton:
Sure, yeah.
Belva Smith:
Or do the more complicated thing would be the HeadMouse-
Josh Anderson:
Yeah. HeadMouse. That’s right.
Belva Smith:
HeadMouse. Yeah.
Brian Norton:
HeadMouse Extreme. Yeah.
Belva Smith:
Yeah. So, there are definitely other options that could be considered for this individual. But really, most importantly, a job site evaluation would be the best solution to try to get the best answer.
Josh Anderson:
For sure. Especially if already using Dragon. I’ve had many times where I’ve had to have somebody type everything out essentially in Word and then select all copy, paste it over into whatever program it is that they’re using, if it’s not really compatible. Also, there’s so many different ways to access the computer. If you’d use Dragon, but maybe you have to use the mouse, well, maybe a trackball, maybe a joystick, maybe something a little bit different. A different kind of input might be a way that you can work both of those together and still use what you got? But yeah, that’s where the evaluation phase comes in, Belva, you’re right?
Brian Norton:
We bring a lot of equipment to the eval and we try those things out with individuals and do that. I will say in the notes as this podcast ends we do make sure that-
Belva Smith:
I know [crosstalk 00:21:14]-
Brian Norton:
… folks know that [crosstalk 00:21:16] product endorsements, and those kinds of things. And going back to your typing aids, if you look up Clear View typing aids, you can go to Mac or I’m sorry alimed.com A-L-I-M-E-D.com. Look up Clear View typing aids, that’ll give you an idea what those look like. And again, they’re 15, $20 left handed, right handed depending on what you want.
Belva Smith:
Yeah. If you were creative, you could actually even make your own with a pencil. But that would probably be the first place that I would try to go just because it is cheap, and could be a perfect solution.
Brian Norton:
The other thing I’ll run into is Belva mentioned scripting. I’ve run into lots of situations through an evaluation process I’m working with an individual. It’s a third party type of software program and Dragon just doesn’t work. It doesn’t go to the buttons. It doesn’t get to the controls. There’s no words for me to speak to get there other than saying mouse grid and having it click on things around the screen.
Josh Anderson:
Which can be a little bit frustrating when you have to-
Brian Norton:
Really frustrating.
Josh Anderson:
… really do that. Yeah.
Brian Norton:
Right. Yeah, really frustrating. And there is an option within Dragon Professional to do some scripting, and that’ll allow you to say, “Click on,” you can create your own command name, and then it’ll actually either there’s, I think, a few different ways to do it. You can actually just have it record your movements on the computer. So it will actually watch the mouse and record the mouse movements, clicking, and all those kinds of things, and then plot that out right within the scripting window that you create. And then you can also then have it type keys or move the mouse certain pixels or whatever. There’s a lot of different scripting options with Dragon. And that might be something to consider if it’s an application that you’re just having some difficulty with, and might solve a lot of the issues.
Brian Norton:
The other things I want to mention is there’s two add-ons. Now there’s one PCByVoice is an option. There’s another one called VoiceComputer. And this does some things by expounding on what Dragon already does with the mouse grid and other kinds of things. If you think about, so the voice input that’s built into the Windows computer, you can say something like show numbers. And when you say show numbers, every control within the window has a number over top of it and then you can just say whatever number you want to click on. VoiceComputer and PCByVoice help do some of that with Dragon. It’s an add-on for Dragon.
Brian Norton:
Then the other thing I’ll mention is with the new accessibility features in iOS, iOS 13, but then also the ones on the Mac through Catalina, the new Mac operating system. They also have done a really good job of expanding upon their voice recognition options. Well, in iOS-
Belva Smith:
Voice control.
Brian Norton:
Yeah, they didn’t even really have that before. But now you can do lots of things with those. And on not only your mobile device, but also on your Mac computer. And it might be something to consider because I’ve been pretty impressed with what you’ve been able to do, if there’s a Mac compatible application in Mac is something that the employer would support. So, something to consider and try. Again, through the evaluation process, you’re probably going to get into some of that. This person who’s asking the question, you might be an evaluator, and just kind of a little bit trying to figure some things out with this particular case, but certainly some things to think about and to try to figure out what might be the best solution for them.
Brian Norton:
So, you did mention house HeadMouse Extreme, that is a good option. Just for folks who don’t know what we’re talking about there is those actually will allow you to be able to use your head movement to be able to then move the cursor on the screen. There’s also one called Ohnu O-H-N-U, is that how you say that one? Anyways, it’s again a HeadMouse, it’s got a headband. And basically, what happens is on the computer you have something connected to the computer that puts an infrared beam out, and it’s shooting off of a reflective dot on your forehead and be able to move the mouse around the, Ohnu. I think maybe you U-H-N-O is how you say it, or Q-U-H-N-O. I wish I knew.
Brian Norton:
But anyways, that one has a headband, doesn’t use an infrared, but it does allow you to then as you move the mouse around… I’m sorry, as you move your head around the mouse moves and then it usually comes with some controls to be able to let you do a single click, double click, drag, or right click. So, some options there. Would love to open this up to folks who are listening. If you’re listening and you’ve had some experience maybe with folks who have had similar situations or maybe you have a similar situation and have found some things that are helpful for you, love to hear from you. You can give us a call on our listener line, that’s 317-721-7124. Or you can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks so much.
Brian Norton:
All right. So, our next question is I have an employee who is blind and they will begin working the cash register at our store. Do you know of any accessible point of sale systems we could implement to make it accessible for them? We have been looking to upgrade our older cash register systems, but are not sure what we should be looking for, any thoughts? And I’m looking directly across the table at Belva, and Josh because I know we deal with this a lot. And I think it’s gotten… Accessibility in the area of point of sale systems has gotten a lot easier, I think.
Belva Smith:
Yeah, this takes me way back to when I first came into this industry because one of the first groups of folks that I trained were part of the Randolph Shepherd Vending Program. I’m not even sure why. I think it must have been for their cafeteria settings or whatever. But part of our training was using a talking cash register.
Josh Anderson:
I’ve used those too.
Belva Smith:
And it came to us not programmed. So, I had a book-
Josh Anderson:
It is a huge book.
Belva Smith:
Yes. [crosstalk 00:27:38]. A book as thick as you could imagine to program that, and yes, in our old technology we have a different talking cash register.
Tracy Castillo:
I found one in there.
Belva Smith:
Yes. So, talking cash registers have been around and are still around and still widely used.
Josh Anderson:
And they’re what? About three grand a [crosstalk 00:28:00]-
Belva Smith:
They’re pretty expensive.
Josh Anderson:
Last time I’ve had to deal with [crosstalk 00:28:02]-
Belva Smith:
They’re pretty expensive. They do for the most part come programmed. However, you’re going to need to personalize that. Are you selling… Depending upon what you’re selling. Are you selling clothing? Are you selling food products? Whatever it is that you’re selling, you’re going to basically have to enter your inventory into that. But yeah, if you Google talking cash register, probably one of the first ones that will come up will be the Captek, C-A-P-T-E-K. They have been around for a very, very long time and are probably one of the more reliable talking cash register systems. They do have a great support system. And yeah, Josh, I think you said right around three grand and that’s about right.
Josh Anderson:
Most of that’s for the 805 page instruction booklet.
Belva Smith:
Right. But recently the Square cash system has become very popular. And the beauty of that is it is fully accessible by individuals that are blind or visually impaired because you use an iPad and in fact, I heard just today, which I’ve never seen, and I’m still questioning whether the person really knew what they were using. Because it was my understanding to use Square you needed to use the iPad, if you were going to use the POS system. But I heard an individual this morning say that they were using an Android tablet for the cash register system. Now I do know that you can use the card readers on an Android or an iPhone. But anyway, basically you use the tablet as your cash register system and then you’ll have a cash drawer that you can connect to it. You can connect a barcode scanner to it. You can connect a printer to it so that you can actually print out receipts.
Belva Smith:
Again, this is going to be a lot of work in the setup because you do have to manually enter your products into the system, but fully accessible using the voiceover screen reading application that’s included with your iPad. We, Josh and I both have used these with individuals in different job accommodations for individuals running cafeterias, snack bars. I helped an individual get her little boutique setup. And we were also using, believe it or not, the Square system when it was brand new, but it’s just real simple to set it up and as your inventory changes, it’s so easy to go in and add or remove products as you go along. And depending upon how much you want to dig into it, Square can actually do a great deal of the background work for you keeping track of your sales and ordering your products and that kind of stuff. I think Josh you did a little more with that than what I did. But yeah, you can actually set up your vendors list so that it can actually track your inventory as you do your sales.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah, really, and Belva you kind of said it all there. I don’t know if you could use it on an Android tablet or not but I don’t know if it’d works as well as the voiceover with the Square so I’d probably try to stay, especially if you’re dealing with an individual who’s blind definitely stick with the iPad part. The only thing I’ve ever run into with it is we wanted to implement it for someone, but the nature of their business was you put in the orders, you took the payments and everything, and then it had to send it to another screen. You know what I mean? It didn’t… so that the cook could make food. It had to pop off in a screen.
Belva Smith:
Gotcha, gotcha.
Josh Anderson:
And if they would have had a ticket system, it would have worked. But we couldn’t… There wasn’t anything. Now there might be now. This has been a little while ago, maybe there’s an extra app or something else you can add, but you couldn’t have that order go back to another screen. We couldn’t ever figure it out. So they ended up having to use a different system that unfortunately just wasn’t quite as accessible.
Belva Smith:
No, I get exactly what you’re saying. So basically, you’ve got two screens where you’ve got the person taking the order, and then you need the person who’s preparing it, or packing it will say even, to see that information. And I don’t think that the system itself has a way to do that.
Josh Anderson:
Mm-mm (negative).
Belva Smith:
So yeah, that could be-
Josh Anderson:
Yeah, and that was the only issue we ran into. Now if they would have been willing to change it to a ticket system to where a ticket prints up they could have done that because I believe it can hook up to more than one printer.
Belva Smith:
You can hook up more than one printer.
Josh Anderson:
And you can send it to different parts and pieces and parts, but they already had that system in place and didn’t want to change it. So really, that’s just something to think about depending on what kind of point of sale system you’re looking for, what kind of business you have. There are some limits to what Square can do. And also I don’t know what the actual startup cost of getting the whole system are.
Brian Norton:
I was wondering what is the cost of [crosstalk 00:33:05].
Belva Smith:
The startup Square system is probably going to be around two grand.
Josh Anderson:
Okay.
Belva Smith:
That’s to get your tablet, to get your readers, to get your printer, to get your cash drawer, to get all that stuff. So, a little less than what your talking cash register is going to be.
Josh Anderson:
And then it charges 2%.
Belva Smith:
Yeah. That’s another very important-
Josh Anderson:
2% per credit card transaction.
Belva Smith:
Yep.
Josh Anderson:
Okay.
Belva Smith:
Another very important thing to keep in mind is yes, there is a small fee for every credit card transaction. It’s a very small fee. I don’t know what it is exactly.
Josh Anderson:
But even if you have an old school cash register, and you have the little touch pad device that, that still charges you for every credit card [crosstalk 00:33:43].
Belva Smith:
That’s what I was going to say. It’s not necessarily the Square system that’s charging you. It’s the credit card transaction that’s costing you, and that’s true whether you’re using a talking cash register or you’re using the Square system. So, I will just say that in our roles we have helped plenty of individuals that are totally blind be able to be a cashier in many different instances.
Tracy Castillo:
I have a question on that one, Belva.
Belva Smith:
Sure.
Tracy Castillo:
So, what do you do with the cash management part of it? So someone hands you a 20, what are you going to do with that?
Brian Norton:
I was going to ask that same thing.
Belva Smith:
Well, there’s a couple of different ways that that can be handled. There’s the bill, what is it the Bill ID thing where you just run the-
Brian Norton:
Money through-
Belva Smith:
… money through it and it tells you what it is. You could also just use a bill identifier on your iPad or iPhone to tell you what the currency is. Depending upon your clientele you can also just count on them to ask or to tell you that it’s a 20 or it’s a 10. But I would probably suggest having one of the bill counters there with you. And as far as the change part of it goes, you just need to know the change. Because yes, you can have a change counter, but those things are extremely expensive, huge, noisy, and not something that you want at your checkout process.
Josh Anderson:
Yeah. You just have to be able to feel, and tell the difference on those.
Belva Smith:
Yeah.
Brian Norton:
Right. And those are talking… I’ve been to a convenience store and they had the little, where I had to run my money through, and the cashier would grab it from the other side, but it would say $20 bill, or $1 bill or $5 bill, but then they talk to you. So that helps folks know what you’re doing there.
Belva Smith:
Yeah, Brian, you and I worked together with a blind cashier at a snack bar at a high school, and that’s what she had. She had the bill identifier sitting right by the register. And as the folks would come up, they would just slide their money in and it would come through and she would pull it out. So they’d slide it in it would say five US dollars. She’d pull out and know, okay, I got a five.
Brian Norton:
And then she moved to a point of sale system, which was a whole lot more complicated than Square, and it took us a long time to script it so [crosstalk 00:36:03]-
Belva Smith:
Square would have been a lot easier in that situation.
Brian Norton:
It would have been, yeah.
Belva Smith:
Yes.
Brian Norton:
Absolutely.
Belva Smith:
A lot of scripting had to go into that, right?
Brian Norton:
It did, and I still get called out maybe once a year when they add different types of snacks. So, no more do they do their jalapeno cheddar pretzels, which were amazing.
Josh Anderson:
What? So, amazing.
Brian Norton:
But now they do something different, so I have to go out there and change the food items every once in a while. Excellent.
Josh Anderson:
Brian, those were kind of the norm, wasn’t it? It was usually some sort of touchscreen system built over Windows. Usually an older version of Windows, so yeah, you had to put a screen reading software on there. Go back and script where everything was, which JAWS in those don’t really like working with touchscreens anyway because if I’m blind or visually impaired, I’m probably not using a touchscreen a whole lot with JAWS. So, that was the norm for a while. Unfortunately, those just weren’t really accessible and you can only change so much. You could make the print bigger, you could change the button position, but other than that you had to really dig in.
Belva Smith:
Well, she actually was running JAWS.
Brian Norton:
Yeah.
Belva Smith:
It was actually a Windows PC with-
Brian Norton:
A touchscreen.
Belva Smith:
… a touchscreen overlay, and fortunately, it is programmable for Brian to go in and write JAWS’ scripts to tell JAWS that it needs to-
Brian Norton:
We were able to take the icons off of all the buttons and create text on those buttons.
Josh Anderson:
Oh, nice.
Belva Smith:
Yeah.
Brian Norton:
And then I was able to tell JAWS, when you press this key, give her a list of all the food items on screen one, and you can put peanut butter and jelly sandwich and she can choose that off of a dialog or a list and it would automatically run out there and find peanut butter and jelly on her on the screen, and then click it for her.
Belva Smith:
And all very doable, but again, I’m not sure what kind of business this individual has. Simplicity, I would suggest that you look into the Square system.
Josh Anderson:
Because it’s just using voiceover that’s built into the iPad.
Brian Norton:
Your ramp up time is going to be a lot less.
Belva Smith:
A lot less.
Josh Anderson:
You turn it on, you turn on voiceover, and you’re done. It can read everything on that screen.
Belva Smith:
If you look around, businesses of all different nature are using those kinds of systems nowadays.
Josh Anderson:
Oh, yeah.
Brian Norton:
I think it’s because it’s simple. It’s easy to understand and use. So, excellent. I would love an opportunity for folks to ring in on this question. If you have some feedback or additional information, please let us know. You can give us a call on our listener line, that’s 317-721-7124. Or give us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or send us a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks.
Brian Norton:
All right. So, our next question is what is your favorite text prediction extension for Chrome? And not Co:Writer was a specific part of the question, and so-
Josh Anderson:
There’s been a lot of hate on Co:Writer lately. I feel like-
Brian Norton:
Yeah, I don’t know.
Belva Smith:
Why is that?
Josh Anderson:
I don’t know.
Brian Norton:
I don’t know. I’ve always had good success with Co:Writer. What I love about Co:Writer is the fact that it gives you context sensitive word prediction. So you can get a list of words based on maybe the subject you’re in, in school. And it only gives you words… It only predicts words from that particular dictionary. I love that piece because it helps folks if you’re doing American history it’s going to have words related to American history that will pop up, and nothing else outside of whatever list of words that you’ve given it. And so, I would think that would be helpful, but I’m not sure what in particular, in this case, they didn’t want to use Co:Writer. But there’s several out there, lots of them.
Brian Norton:
Usually I just end up going to the Google Chrome Store, and I started looking up those, but we have used some of these in the past. And I’ll just give you a couple of them. And then I think we’ve got three or four listed here, but one that I hear a lot about is WordQ. It seemingly has some less bells and whistles than what Co:Writer has, but seems to work okay. I have heard from some folks that it’s a little more complicated. That’s W-O-R-D-Q. I believe it’s got a couple of… I think it’s got other functions as well. I think you can do voice input with it, and some other kinds of things. So, it goes a little bit beyond text prediction. But again, maybe less bells and whistles, maybe not as complicated of a menu system or feature [crosstalk 00:40:29].
Belva Smith:
Well, and looking at the website I’m not sure, but it does say that it’s for elementary and secondary. So maybe if here you were looking something high school, college level, it might not be-
Brian Norton:
The best option.
Belva Smith:
… the best option.
Brian Norton:
Could be absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. The other one I’ll mention too, is Read&Write for Google. This is a pay for version, so if you ever have played with Read&Write. Read&Write available at quite a few higher education places. And so, basically, traditionally it’s a scan and read program. So, it takes any text and turns it into speech for you. But as a part of their program, they do have text prediction built into it as well. The caveat with this one is it’s $129 a year per student. It’s free for the first 30 days full functioning software, you can download it to try it out for 30 days, but then you got to pay 129 per year per student so it can get a little bit more expensive. I think if you do it as a district, you can get some volume pricing available for some of those. But it is a program that we have recommended standalone for individuals before.
Brian Norton:
Again, it has lots of different menus, lots of different functionality for folks with learning disabilities, particularly that it’s a text to speech reader. But then, gives you text prediction, gives you voice input, does a whole bunch of separating out of, giving the person the ability to annotate documents, other types of printed materials, and things like that. So, Read&Write for Google is a really great program, although expensive as well.
Tracy Castillo:
Brian, don’t we have read or write in the library as well?
Brian Norton:
We do.
Tracy Castillo:
So, we have those on our two computers if you wanted to try those.
Brian Norton:
Yeah. So if you’re interested, again, always helpful to go to your local Assistive Technology Act, check some of these things out, really get your hands on them, walk through them, figure out what they can offer. Then you can make an informed decision about it instead of just putting out money up front. Now, in this particular case, you can just go to their website and download it for 30 days-
Tracy Castillo:
Nice.
Brian Norton:
… free and then it’s going to prompt you to put your billing information in and you can just choose not to, but again, AT Act, our AT Act has I believe, I think, I know we have Read&Write. I thought we used to have WordQ, I don’t know if we do anymore, but [crosstalk 00:43:02]-
Tracy Castillo:
I have not seen-
Brian Norton:
… two particular options for folks.
Belva Smith:
Brian, I’m noticing too as I’m looking at WordQ because I do remember, I thought we had it as well, but-
Brian Norton:
It’s been a while.
Belva Smith:
Yeah, it says that it will work offline as well as online. And so, you can also synchronize your settings. So, it sounds like basically your settings for this particular program are set within your Google user account. So, wherever you log into Google, you would have your settings available. It says that it is secondary, and elementary basic… word appropriate for elementary and secondary. So, maybe if you… Again, if you’re in high school, college, probably want to look at something with a broader dictionary.
Brian Norton:
The other one I’m going to throw out here too, and I think this is oftentimes an overlooked program, but Claro software has something called ClaroRead Chrome extension. Again, I think at its core, all of these programs are text to speech program. So, they take the text that’s on the webpage, and they read it back to you. But again, all of them have this text prediction. And so, if you look in ClaroRead, I believe it’s free. I believe there are some in app purchases that you can use. But I believe prediction is one of those things that are free. It just basically, once you put that Chrome extension in, you can open up the menu system. You can play around with the speech piece of it, but then there’s a prediction tab that you can use, and you can just simply use prediction or you can do phonetic prediction as well. So, if a person has trouble with spelling, which is often the case, it’ll do its best guess of what that person is trying to spell phonetically, not just letter by letter. And so ClaroRead Chrome settings is also an option, and certainly something to think about and look at.
Brian Norton:
So those would be the three that I would throw out. WordQ, Read&Write or ClaroRead. I’d love to open that up to folks who are listening. If you guys have maybe some suggestions that maybe I didn’t think of, but what’s your favorite text to speech program for Google Chrome as an extension? I’d love to be able to share that with folks. So, if you would let us know at 317-721-7124 or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks.
Brian Norton:
All right. So, our next question is I have seen many options for digital magnifiers. Looking for advice on what you have used and what you loved or did not like. I want to work on cell phones, computers, and other electronic devices. But need to magnify those with no hands. And so, looking for digital magnifiers for working on mobile devices.
Belva Smith:
I was so excited when I seen this question because it also took me back to a young man that I helped many years ago who was losing his sight, but also going to school to be transmission repair person.
Brian Norton:
Interesting.
Belva Smith:
Yeah, transmissions for any of you who are not aware have millions of tiny parts. And what he needed to do was obviously be able to look down inside these transmissions, and see all those different parts so that he could take them apart, clean them, fix them, put them back together. So, what we did in his job accommodation is used the… Oh, gosh. Hold on. Give me a second here I’m going to tell you the Acrobat Short Arm is what we use in his case. This is basically a camera that can be positioned in pretty much any position that you want it to be in, and then also the information is in displayed onto a large screen. In his case we used a 46 inch TV mounted onto the wall.
Brian Norton:
Wow, that’s huge.
Belva Smith:
I know, right? And this was a long time ago. So, I can only imagine how heavy that 46 inch [crosstalk 00:47:40]-
Brian Norton:
And how much it cost.
Belva Smith:
Yeah, how heavy that 46 inch TV was, and how much it must have cost. But we did mount that TV onto the wall, and then attach the Short Arm to a tabletop where the transmission is actually dropped into a hole that was cut out. And he could then move that camera around and see what he wanted to see.
Belva Smith:
Most recently did a job accommodation for low vision individual who’s going to do PC building and repairing and Mac repairs. And so, we did a long arm camera for him. So again, it was the Acrobat camera, and a long arm. For him we did a 32 inch monitor, primarily because he’s able to… His workspaces is just set up differently, and the pieces to take apart a computer is very different than trying to take apart a transmission because transmissions are also very greasy. So we needed to make sure that we were keeping that screen up away from the grease. But anyway, that’s the first thing that I would look at is one of those cameras that are on an arm where you can mount them to your workstation, and yet still have them flexible enough to move around, stretch up, down. And then whatever size monitor is going to be appropriate for the situation. As long as you have an HDMI input on the monitor, you can connect that camera. Now I’m not even sure are there other cameras out there like the Acrobat that’s on an arm?
Brian Norton:
There are. I can’t remember the name of them, but they’re very similar in nature. They’re going to have the same features. I think a lot of the CCTVs that have the cameras that come up and over the top of the monitor also have a monitor arm option to them.
Belva Smith:
Some of them do, some of them do.
Brian Norton:
And so, you’ll find these, they’re close. They’re distance viewing cameras that flip up and down. And they allow you to see what’s in front of you that you can then look at your yourself as a mirror, but then also shoot them up if you’re in a classroom to be able to see what’s happening up in front of the classroom.
Belva Smith:
You have a much more limited workspace if you do one of those like the Acrobat that is attached to the monitor. You have a much more limited workspace than you do if you put it on an arm. So, he named what, computers, phones, basically all small electronic devices.
Brian Norton:
I tell you something that I’ve used in the past along with some… I had a similar person. He worked at a place where he was working on small computer boards and things like that. We used a very similar accommodation to the one you described. But we also recommended a grill light for him.
Belva Smith:
I did a headlamp. [crosstalk 00:50:45].
Brian Norton:
Yeah, a headlamp or grill light. The one I had, had three magnetic bases. It also had a clamp, and it had this big snake arm that you move this LED light around because inside those small little spaces there’s not enough light oftentimes for you to really see all that clearly. That provided enough light for him, in addition to having the magnification to be able to see what was there. So, look at… there’s a lot of really great grill adaptations for low vision.
Belva Smith:
And the Acrobat camera, by the way, doesn’t have any light. So, you’re going to need some additional lighting more than likely to get inside those electronical… Electronical, is that a word?
Brian Norton:
Sure.
Belva Smith:
I don’t think so.
Brian Norton:
We’re going to go and see.
Belva Smith:
But anyway to get inside those devices, you’re going to want some additional lighting.
Brian Norton:
That’s cool. Excellent. And now it’s time for the wildcard question. All right, so our next question is the wildcard question, and this is where I’m looking across the table at Belva. Belva has got a wildcard for us today. Belva, what do you have?
Belva Smith:
Well, I actually, this is a wildcard question that is kind of a rubber back to one that we had done a while back. So if you’re coming into the office in the morning and you happen to look down on the ground and there’s this 128 terabyte thumb drive just laying there looking like brand new. Would you pick it up and bring it in and plug it into your computer to see what’s on it?
Brian Norton:
I would pick it up and bring it in and plug it into your computer.
Tracy Castillo:
I have a scrap computer I could plug it into.
Brian Norton:
Yeah, honestly, what I would do with that is I’d bring it to my IT department. They have a test computer that they… Plus, for our organization, we’re HIPAA compliant. I would sure hope there’s not any private information on that thumb drive that’s just sitting out in our-
Belva Smith:
And if it was you would want to know, right?
Brian Norton:
I would want to know, and I wouldn’t want to be opening or doing anything with that. So, I’d be taking it to our security officer and making sure that folks have that, but that is interesting.
Belva Smith:
It would be very hard to not just bring it in and plug it in. But you guys have all said the right answer. You would take it someplace safe to do it. And the reason that you would do that is because it is very possible that you could plug a thumb drive into your computer and it could totally crash your computer. It could totally crash the network. Or it could just plant something that you wouldn’t even know it did. You might think, “Oh, wow, it is empty. I’m just going to go ahead and use it. And then I’m going to let my brother use it too.” Meanwhile, it’s putting something nasty on your computer. So, definitely, if you find one and you’re curious what’s on it, try to do it in a safe place.
Brian Norton:
A couple years ago, we bought for our department, we bought hard drives that actually have key codes on them. It has a little number pad on the outside of the hard drive and you have to know that key code to be able to make sure that you’re the right owner, and you can get into it to see what’s there. And so, that was a HIPAA deal for us just to make sure we can secure those when we’re out and about because we carry lots of programs. I don’t think we have a whole lot, if any private health information on there.
Belva Smith:
No, we don’t.
Brian Norton:
I think we carried around a lot of installs for different adaptive software, presentations, other kinds of things that we do just to make sure we had those with us if we needed them. But a better way to keep those things safe. So, this really happened to you?
Belva Smith:
No, no, no. No, no. It did not happen to me. It was-
Josh Anderson:
She’s like, my computer’s working really funny because I plugged that in. That’s what [crosstalk 00:54:32]-
Belva Smith:
That’s what going on with my phone, right?
Josh Anderson:
Yeah.
Belva Smith:
No, it was actually a caller had called into one of the other tech shows that I listened to and was asking. Said he found it and he wanted really badly to plug it in and find out what’s on it.
Brian Norton:
It is so tempting.
Belva Smith:
Yeah, because he’s like, it’s 120 gigabyte. I could put all kinds of music on here. He had not plugged it in at that time. He was advised not to. So, it would be very tempting, but the best thing to do would be if you are going to do it, do it on a computer that it’s safe to do it on. Not on a computer that you depend on. And then quickly, I wanted to ask this is kind of a double one, I guess. What do you guys do with your Safari tabs on your phone when… Like right now if I looked at my Safari tabs, I’ve probably got 25 of them open or something. Do you leave them open? Do you close them when you’re done?
Josh Anderson:
I close them most of the times, but about once in a while I will go through and go to security, I believe, or under Settings, go down to Safari, and you can clear your browsing history, and stuff.
Belva Smith:
Actually they-
Josh Anderson:
I really only do that because it saves space. Especially if I start getting down on my amount of space I’ll go and hit that. And it actually does pretty well. Plus sometimes especially because doing reports, things like that. I get to some weird sites. Not weird like, Brian probably goes to. No offense, Brian, but just some different kind of blogs and things like that. I never really know exactly what it is, or some AT equipments. Gone on some very weird German site or something like that just trying to figure out what people have used. So, just to make sure I don’t have anything bad, but really I just go delete it every once in a while because of space.
Belva Smith:
Well, something that I just learned again a couple of days ago with I think this just happened with the last update. But if you go to settings and go under Safari, there’s actually a setting that you can choose to automatically close your [crosstalk 00:56:37] to close your page tabs, or you can choose to close them manually or after one day or after one week or after one month. And I thought, well, that’s so cool because I’m pretty sure if you check my page tabs right now I probably got 20 of them open. I’m sure that that cost battery life, and I’m well aware of my battery life because it’s dying so quickly anymore. But I was afraid to change it from manual because I sometimes keep those page… often keep those pages open because I need to get back to it later. And if I close it, I’m going to lose it forever.
Belva Smith:
But yeah, if you go under settings and then under Safari there’s all kinds of things. You can choose your search engine there. And I’m sure I must have done that in the beginning because mine is set on Google, which is my favorite. But there’s all kinds of settings there for Safari that I was not aware was there. In fact, I keep saying I don’t use the iCloud Drive, but I see that any downloads I do or go into my iCloud Drive. So I guess that I am using it. So, wild car question was just again about safety and safe surfing we’ll call it.
Brian Norton:
Excellent. Well, hey, I want to thank the folks who are here with me today. Thank you guys for being a part of it. Tracy, do you have anything you want to say as we sign off today?
Tracy Castillo:
I’m still in the room. I’m over here.
Brian Norton:
Excellent. Belva, do you want to say anything before we sign off?
Belva Smith:
See everybody in two weeks.
Brian Norton:
And Josh?
Josh Anderson:
Hey, thanks for listening, everybody. See you soon.
Brian Norton:
Excellent. Again, if you have questions, assistive technology questions, if you have any feedback regarding the questions we asked today, we’d love to hear from you. In fact, without your questions, we don’t have a show. So, be a part of it. We’d love to hear from you. You can do that in a variety of ways. Our voicemail is 317-721-7124. Or you can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or send us a tweet with the hashtag #ATFAQ. I’d love to hear from you. And so, thank you so much. Have a great one. Bye, bye. And it seems like every week we have at least one blooper so here you go.
Tracy Castillo:
I think that was so-
Brian Norton:
You guys are all over this, right?
Josh Anderson:
I would be if I could find what I was looking for. Okey dokey.
Brian Norton:
Okay.
Tracy Castillo:
[inaudible 00:59:03] gallery.
Josh Anderson:
Man.
Tracy Castillo:
My name is Tracy. I live in a dream.
Brian Norton:
Hello, why can’t we hear you through my headphones?
Belva Smith:
Seriously [inaudible 00:59:14].
Josh Anderson:
Are you serious?
Belva Smith:
I am dead serious.
Josh Anderson:
Oh, my God.
Brian Norton:
Have you turned your phone off?
Belva Smith:
Yes, I did.
Josh Anderson:
Have you tried unplugging it? I’m just kidding, sorry. [crosstalk 00:59:21].
Belva Smith:
I’ve got to plug in [crosstalk 00:59:24]-
Brian Norton:
Why don’t you… Have you tried the power button?
Brian Norton:
Information provided on Assistive Technology FAQ 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 help by Josh Anderson, and Belva Smith. 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.
