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ATFAQ131 – Q1. Low Tech AT, Q2. Classroom Transcriptions, Q3. Voice Control on iPhone, Q4. Android or iOS accessibility, Q5. Favorite iOS 14 accessibility feature, Q6. Wildcard: Are we ever going back to regular office work?

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Panel: Brian Norton, Josh Anderson, Belva Smith, Tracy Castillo. Q1. Low Tech AT, Q2. Classroom Transcriptions, Q3. Voice Control on iPhone, Q4. Android or iOS accessibility, Q5. Favorite iOS 14 accessibility feature, Q6. Wildcard: Are we ever going back to regular “office work”?

—————— Transcript Starts Here ———————————-

Brian Norton:
Welcome to ATFAQ, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions with your host Brian Norton, director of assistive technology at Easterseals Crossroads. This is a show where 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 us a tweet with the hashtag ATFFAQ. 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 to ATFAQ episode 131. My name is Brian Norton and I’m the host of the show and we’re so happy that you’ve taken some time to tune in with us this week. We have a great lineup of assistive technology questions for you today. But before we jump in, I just want to take a moment to go around the room and welcome our guests here with us. We’re still active on Zoom. And so the first person I’ll introduce to you is Belva Smith. Belva is the vision team lead for our clinical assistive technology team. Belva, do you want to say hi?

Belva Smith:
Hi everybody.

Brian Norton:
Next person is Tracy Castillo. She is our INDATA program manager. Tracy, do you want to say hi to folks today?

Tracy Castillo:
I sure do. Thank you for having me. Hi, everyone.

Brian Norton:
And then we have Josh Anderson. Josh is the manager of our clinical assistive technology program and popular host of the AT Update podcast that we do here at Easterseals Crossroads. Josh, do you want to say hi? Josh is being shy.

Tracy Castillo:
We might add that Josh is kind of not in the normal location today, so.

Josh Anderson:
Hi, everybody.

Brian Norton:
Excellent. Excellent. Hey, so before we jump into our questions for today, I just want to talk to new listeners. If you are the first time listener to our show, just want to talk a little bit about how our show works. We receive feedback and come across various assistive technology related questions throughout the week. We have a variety of ways for folks to be able to contribute to the show in that way. We have a listener line set up. It’s 317 721-7124 or you can send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or send us a tweet at the hashtag ATFAQ, the great ways for you to provide your questions to us.

Brian Norton:
Other things that we really enjoy is for folks to be able to provide us feedback as well. And so you can provide feedback on the questions. In fact, we kind of love to get feedback. I don’t know about the rest of the folks here on the call, but we’ve all talked about it before and getting people’s feedback is really fun because we only know what we know. And we’re interested in what you know about some of the questions that we answer. And so we’ll solicit that feedback throughout the show today. And again, you can call our listener line, send us an email, or send us a tweet with that feedback as well.

Brian Norton:
If you’re looking for our show, really just about anywhere you can go find it a podcast, you can find our show. So you can find it on iTunes. We have a website set up. It’s ATFAQshow.com. You can go to Stitcher or Google Play Store, really, again, just anywhere you can find a show or a podcast, you’ll be able to find our show. So without further ado, I just want to jump into our first question.

Brian Norton:
So here’s the question. Let’s say you have a brand new assistive technology team in your county and you are the lead. Your boss gives you money to buy some tech stuff such as Velcro to make low tech accommodations for folks, what else do you buy? So you have some money and you can buy some stuff, but it’s all got to be low tech stuff. So what do you go do? What do you do with that money and what do you go buy?

Belva Smith:
Well, I actually came up with a few other things that I would suggest as soon as I can get to it. Hold on. Well, okay. Off the top of my head, one of the first things I thought of is 20-20 markers for note taking. That’s usually pretty helpful for people with low vision. And also besides just Velcro, some of the bumps is what I call them, or markers. And the reason I say that is because some folks, they just like those better than they do the Velcro. The Velcro is great, especially if an individual has some numbness in their fingers or their fingers just aren’t as sensitive as they could be.

Belva Smith:
So I would suggest getting different sizes of bumps and markers. Shelf liner is also something very inexpensive that I have used in many different situations for lots of different reasons. Perhaps at least one large print keyboard or basically a couple of different keyboards, not all necessarily large print. But keyboards can be so different, based upon the manufacturer. So just having a couple of different QWERTY keyboards would be helpful, I think.

Belva Smith:
Perhaps some different colored paper, just things to have on hand for lots of different reasons. Colored paper can be helpful. That’s the few things that I came up with off of the top of my head. You’ll notice most of those things are targeted toward the low vision category rather than, I guess, different abilities across the board.

Brian Norton:
This is kind of an area that I just love. I love low tech things. I like to make things. Sometimes when I get up, and I’ll date myself here a little bit, but when I get up in front of folks and I kind of explain what we try to do, I say, “Think about Tim “The Toolman” Taylor a little bit.” We’re creating different things for different people that may do something that you weren’t really even thinking it could do. So I spend a lot of time at Lowe’s and other kinds of places. Along the lines of what you were talking about, Belva, I was thinking about puffy paints, other kinds of things maybe from a craft store or whatnot just as an addition to some of those bumps that you’re talking about.

Brian Norton:
But I always love different types of fasteners, PVC pipe, Velcro, all sorts of things. There are twisty ties, industrial twist ties that you can buy at places like Lowe’s and other types of things. And I think you can make tons of really useful, interesting things out of just about anything you might find at Lowe’s.

Brian Norton:
I’ve seen people use flag holders, that mount to the post out on your porch, as ways for folks to be able to help them get in and out of cars. I’ve seen them use plexiglass to be able to kind of protect certain things, making different types of adaptations, whether that’s for eating or holding an iPad or holding your tablet or smart device, those types of things. There’s so many things you can do.

Brian Norton:
And so just walking through Lowe’s or Home Depot or ACE Hardware or whatever your local hardware store is, you can probably find lots of great things. The other thing I would throw out there is tape, glue, and all of those other kinds of things to be able to hold things together. There’s tons of interesting types of tape, double sided tape, extra sticky stuff. I don’t know, different things to mount things in different places. I just love low tech and making things out of nothing really, so.

Tracy Castillo:
You know Brian, I just want to piggyback off of that. I’m going to also kind of throw some little coverage towards our blogs. But recently our Laura Medcalf is writing a blog about this. She went to the hardware store like you, and she picked up some dowel rods and hooks, and they made her dressing sticks there. So, yeah, I thought that was-

Brian Norton:
That’s a great idea.

Tracy Castillo:
That is a great idea. And so she wrote a blog about it. You guys should check it out. It’s on our website, Eastersealstech.com. And I think we also have a couple of videos that we’ve done recently. The one video was cut short, wasn’t it? I can’t remember. Therese was on… came to Easterseals and she showed us [inaudible 00:08:22] the stuff that we could make. Is that video archived?

Brian Norton:
It is. Yeah, the actual training got cut short. She provided some stuff. It’s Therese Willkomm. She is on the east coast. She is well known for this type of stuff, making things pretty much out of nothing and taking everyday items and making different types of adaptations for folks. She’s written probably three or four books. And we had her out for a full day training a couple of years ago.

Brian Norton:
Unfortunately, our training got cut short, but she provided us with a lot of YouTube videos that kind of caught people back up with where she was headed that day. So you can go check those out if you go to our Eastersealstech.com/fulldayarchives website. So full day archives is all one word. You’ll be able to find videos of the things that she makes pretty much out of nothing, everyday household items, things you’d find in your home, things you can find in all of your hardware stores. Josh. I was interested in seeing what you might think on this area.

Josh Anderson:
Yeah. Sorry. Somehow it keeps muting itself, so I guess I just won’t use GPS. I think you took pretty much all the ones that I had, but going along with what Belva said, yeah, anytime you work with somebody who’s blind or low vision, I feel like bump [inaudible 00:09:33], Velcro [inaudible 00:09:35] like that just to be able to really kind of help with training.

Josh Anderson:
I mean, whether you’re marking your keyboard or things around the house, it can make it so much easier. And then with Brian, with the hardware store, PVC pipe, you can make so many different things. I mean, I’ve used PVC pipe and the really industrial straps just to put things on wheelchairs, to be able to attach stuff and make it to work and work when maybe you don’t have a full mounting system or another way to do it.

Josh Anderson:
So, yeah, the creativity is probably the funnest part of this job, being able to find stuff like that. Or if the desk is a little bit too short, a couple blocks away can really bring it up to where it needs to be without having to buy a whole new thing.

Brian Norton:
Yeah. It makes me think about… I’d really wonder or maybe want to do some research in our county about what are some of common needs that people might have and what can we do to kind of… before we go out and just buy a bunch of things, maybe just trying to think through a little bit about what would make a good impact in the community that we’re in and maybe talking to a couple of different maybe assistive living facilities, group homes, those [inaudible 00:10:34] kinds of things and figure out maybe what the need is, and then being able to target that a little bit more fully.

Brian Norton:
But again, there’s just so much. One of my favorite places in all the world is just going to the hardware store and just walking around. I get so many ideas for so many things just by walking around the hardware store. And I think we’ve done presentations here on low tech accommodations for persons with disabilities about some of the folks that we’ve worked with and what we’ve done for some of them. And really, it doesn’t take a lot.

Brian Norton:
Most of the combinations are $500 or less and much of the time they’re free because you just use what’s in your environment and you can then go to Lowe’s and, for very low cost, purchase a few things to kind of maybe adapt what you already have. And so there’s a lot to that, thinking about low tech, because it doesn’t always have to be high tech stuff.

Brian Norton:
I think a lot of times we’re able to just to kind of fix… or not fix, but resolve a lot of issues just with low tech stuff. I just wanted to open up to our listeners. If you guys have anything to contribute to that, if you guys have things that you think you might buy if you’re the team lead in a new county and you’re just kind of putting… not a new county, but a new team lead in your county, developing an AT team and you’ve got some money to spend, what would you spend it on? Love to hear from you. Our phone number is 317 721-7124 and our email addresses tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Love to hear from you. Talk to you soon.

Brian Norton:
All right. So our next question is, I have a hearing impaired student that is taking an in-person class in which students are required to break down into small groups to practice negotiating skills. Group members will vary week to week and the class reconvenes after the small group work is done to critique negotiations.

Brian Norton:
As you can imagine, this poses a problem for the student since our university requires everyone to wear a face mask while on campus. We have purchased a limited supply of clear masks for the faculty to wear when teaching in person classes with the hard of hearing students, is there any assistive technology for speech to text that this student could use while in a group so he can participate in the negotiations? Tracy, you were mentioning something about Live Transcribe.

Tracy Castillo:
Yeah, so I always like to go to the built-in one, but I was talking about Live Transcribe, but it started off with the iPhone. The iPhone I have has notes in it and I have dictation enabled on my phone. So if I go into a group of people and I just want to pull out my phone and read what they’re saying, I could use that. I thought, well, not everybody has an iPhone so Google. So we’ve decided that Live Transcribes was another option that they could have and-

Brian Norton:
Excellent. Yeah. So yeah, I mean Live Transcribe, that’s a… I’ve heard a lot about that one. I don’t use Android, but I’ve heard a lot from folks over the last couple of years about how great that application is. And I think it’s just providing real time transcription for folks. So it’s listening to what’s happening around them and just basically transcribes the whole conversation whether you’re in one on one conversations or bigger groups. You just have to have your phone with you. And the same thing with, I think what you’re talking about with dictation is that right?

Tracy Castillo:
Yeah, with dictation it’s already built in. Do you have to download Live Transcribe to your phone if you had it?

Brian Norton:
[inaudible 00:13:57].

Tracy Castillo:
Is it already in there?

Brian Norton:
I don’t think so. I think on Android it’s already a part of their operating system, so yeah. Yeah. I’ll mention just a couple other apps that I’ve had some experience with and I know other folks have too. Otter AI is a great app. I use that one myself when I’m on Zoom meetings or other kinds of group meetings. I’m just running that off to the side and then letting Zoom… It picks up the speaking from the Zoom meeting and just goes ahead and transcribes. And so I get a transcription of the whole meeting, but basically it does the same thing.

Brian Norton:
It’s a program that allows you to capture everything that’s being said, puts it into text into a document. And then what I love about it too, is it also then will look at the text in that document and put up basically keywords. And so you can click on different keywords and it’ll take you down through whatever notes it’s taken down to be able to find certain information about the topics that may have been discussed.

Brian Norton:
Now, all that to say is I don’t use that software for talking specifically about clients or other kinds of things, because that would be a HIPAA violation and we have HIPAA police at our agency to make sure we’re not messing up in that regard. But any general conversations we’re having about things or whatnot, I think it can be a really useful program. And what I really love about it is it’s cross platform and so I can use it on my computer. I can use it on my Mac. I can use it on my phone. I can just open a web browser really on just about anything and it’s going to go ahead and give me access to that.

Brian Norton:
And so simple, easy to use. One caveat, you only get a certain amount of time for free, and then you got to pay a subscription to be able to get lots of usage out of it. And so in this situation, it really kind of probably depends on how much negotiating time there is for you to be able to kind of figure that out to make sure that you’re not kind of crossing over and having to pay for a subscription. Because the free version works great, but if you’re going to use it a lot, you might have to start paying for it.

Josh Anderson:
Yeah. Brian, that Otter AI, if you pay for it, I think you get 6,000 minutes. And if you’re a student, it’s half price.

Brian Norton:
Oh, okay.

Tracy Castillo:
Wow. That’s nice.

Josh Anderson:
So that could definitely kind of save you some. A couple more that you can use is, Apple actually has a translate built into it now in iOS 14, so you can use that. You can just do English to English and it will actually go ahead and transcribe everything. And I think you could even download that native onto your phone so that it doesn’t have to go [inaudible 00:16:19] the cloud any longer, but I’m not positive about that.

Josh Anderson:
And then Microsoft translates another good one that I’ve used in the past, especially because it can be on different… You can have a meeting between different phones and so the person just talks into their device and the words show up on the other person’s. That can make it a little bit easier too.

Belva Smith:
Well, I don’t really have any experience with any of these, but I do have a couple of questions. Do I have to have a wifi connection to be able to use them? And do I need the permission of the others involved in the conversation to be able to be recording the conversation?

Tracy Castillo:
Ooh, great question.

Brian Norton:
I think as far as the wifi is concerned, I know some of them do rely on wifi. I’m not necessarily sure if Live Transcribe does. But I believe the translation app on the iPhone does require it. And so, yeah, you’ll have to check that out beforehand. I know Otter AI does. It’s not doing transcription directly on your device. It’s actually sending it to a web server and they’re using artificial intelligence to be able to send it back to your computer.

Brian Norton:
And so, yeah, I think in many cases this will require wifi. As far as permissions, probably I would probably let folks know that you are recording. I think that would be just common courtesy a lot of times. I’m not exactly sure what the school requires with regard to that. And that’s maybe something to talk to your disability services coordinator there at the school but great questions. Yeah.

Tracy Castillo:
And I like that-

Brian Norton:
We want to certainly sort those things out.

Tracy Castillo:
And I like that [crosstalk 00:17:50] because with notes, no, you don’t have to have a wifi connection if you have your dictation on your phone, so that’ll help you in a pinch.

Josh Anderson:
Well, I don’t know if you have to ask for permission or not because if you’re at a meeting or something and there’s a captioner, you don’t have permission to have yourself captioned, do you?

Brian Norton:
Nope.

Tracy Castillo:
Not that I’m aware of. Uh-uh (negative).

Josh Anderson:
And you’re really just taking captions. You don’t actually have a recording of that person’s voice. So I don’t know if you have to or not. That’s a very good question. I mean, I guess I’d have common courtesy, yeah, you’re probably right, but I don’t think it’s the same as actually [inaudible 00:18:20] someone.

Belva Smith:
Right.

Brian Norton:
Right. I’ll do some research and maybe this is just a follow-up question for our next show or a couple shows down the road. We’ll make sure we get a good answer for that and answer it here in the next couple of shows. If you need permission to be able to do recording no matter where you are. Because you’re right, Josh, I guess I hadn’t thought of that. But if you’re having it captioned already, you don’t ask for permission for that. That’s already going, so that’s a good point.

Brian Norton:
I’m going to throw out one more app here. Ava is a great one. However, the problem with Ava, Ava basically does the same as some of these other apps. It’s transcribing what’s being said and the conversation. The only difference is, depending on the size of your group, what happens with this one is everybody has their phone, right? And so everybody has a smart device. They have the app loaded on their own smart device and as people talk, they’re talking to their own device. And then what happens on other people’s devices around the circle is little speech bubbles will pop up that says, Jim said this, or Alice said that, or Sarah said that.

Brian Norton:
And so you actually get a little bit better representation of what’s going on around the circle because you know who’s saying what and you get it because they’re in individual speech bubbles. However, in order to get Ava to work you need… in my understanding, everybody needs a smart device with the app loaded and open during your discussion. And so that might be a little bit more prohibitive because not everybody, surprisingly enough these days, has a smartphone and are going to be able to have that app open and available, or want to be able to use their phone during that same period of time. And so Ava may not be a good option.

Brian Norton:
So again, just to kind of to wrap up this question, I think about Otter AI, think about Live Transcribe on your Google device, a couple of different options there using dictation and notes, some other kinds of things. All of these are using artificial intelligence to be able to then interpret what you’re saying and transcribe what you’re saying. Your recognition accuracy is going to be lower than having a real cart interpreter or cart transcriptionist involved in your meeting.

Brian Norton:
However, in a pinch, it works pretty well and it sounds like maybe in this situation with kind of moving into separate smaller groups and then coming back to the full class, may be a good option for folks. So check those out. So I just want to open this up to our listeners. If you’ve had similar situations, this seems to be a question we’ve had in different formats over the last few weeks.

Brian Norton:
And so it seems to be more and more of an issue as we get into this digital age and other kinds of things. But if you have any information to provide with regard to speech to text programs that you can use in small groups and in classroom situations, would love to hear from you. You can give us a call on our listener line. That’s 317 721-7124 or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Thanks so much.

Brian Norton:
All right. So our next question is, I’m interested in hearing people’s experiences with voice control on the iPhone. Anything that you know of that’s not been consistent for people and that you haven’t been able to do by voice. Thoughts on that.

Tracy Castillo:
I haven’t tried it yet. I’m too nervous. So that’s been consistent.

Brian Norton:
What makes you nervous about it?

Tracy Castillo:
Well, every time I open it up to start it, I seem like I have to say the same thing over and over again for it to hear my voice, so I don’t like that and it makes me not want to try it again. So that’s what I [inaudible 00:21:57] with it.

Belva Smith:
And in my case, I haven’t really worked with it too much because most of my consumers are using voiceover. Yeah. And voiceover and voice control, the last time I tried them together didn’t work out so well together.

Brian Norton:
Right. I’ve heard that’s changed. So it may be something to reinvestigate with folks under iOS 14. I think what I have heard is they’ve worked out a lot of the bugs that made them not work well together. And so you might want to try it again with your clients. I think they’ve worked out many of the little bugs that were happening and causing them not to be able to play together in the sandbox very well, so.

Belva Smith:
Because I’m assuming that you have probably played with it, Brian, because I think you and I looked at it together for the first time way back when, when it was first introduced. But do you know if you can use that to create new contacts? Because I know that’s one of the biggest issues that my clients often ask is why can’t Siri create a new contact for me. And I don’t have a good answer to that because I don’t understand why she can’t.

Brian Norton:
In my opinion, so Siri is a part… I mean, obviously that’s voice recognition. There’s a smart assistant that’s a part of your phone. And then voice control allows you to be able to navigate your phone a little bit better. And so there’s a couple of different things because voice control, to me, you can use voice control to create a new contact, but it’s not as simple as just saying, “Hey Siri, create a new contact for me.”

Brian Norton:
You would have to go through all of the controls and the menus and other kinds of things to make that happen. And so you could. You could create a new contact for folks, but they would have to walk through the menu system and not just simply ask it a question and have it created.

Belva Smith:
I’ll experiment trying to do that because I do know that that is one of the things that I always get questioned about because, let’s face it, it’s a lot of work to try to type the information in for a new contact. So yeah, I think that’s how I’ll try it. And then I’ll do a followup on that one when we come back next time, I guess.

Brian Norton:
Yeah. Especially if you’re using the onscreen keyboard. That can take a long, long time.

Belva Smith:
Yeah.

Josh Anderson:
So I haven’t really tried it since iOS 14 came out so much, but I used to use it all the time on the iPad. And it seems to work pretty well, especially if you add the numbers to it. So you can just say tab 10 or whatever number is you kind of want. Now Belva, that’s not going to work great with voiceover because it’s kind of visual, but it seems to work pretty well.

Josh Anderson:
The only difficulty I’ve ever had or seen people have difficulty is when you want to put text somewhere, getting to where the text goes sometimes can be a little challenging depending on what you’re in. But other than that, I think it works great. And it seems to understand pretty well. As with anything voice kind of activated or voice controlled, it has some hiccups and glitches sometimes, but it seems to work pretty well.

Brian Norton:
Yeah. I’ve overall been pretty impressed myself. I haven’t had areas where I’ve thought it’s been inconsistent for me, or I haven’t been able to get it to do something. I do think Josh, what you mentioned, putting numbers next to it, really is helpful. It’s easier to say just a number rather than what the actual button is, I think a lot of times for a lot of the folks that we work with. And so I just have it put little number tags next to all the different controls on a particular page. And I haven’t had any issues with it being inconsistently mis-recognizing the things that I say.

Brian Norton:
It’s slower. It’s going to be because you are moving through things. You’re not just simply taking your finger and swiping back and forth and doing those kinds of things. Now I will say you can do that right alongside voice control. It doesn’t change the way you operate the iPad. You can still do gestures. You can still click and point and open stuff up.

Brian Norton:
And really it’s just wake up and go to sleep, right? You can turn it on and turn it off and kind of just move through it, and it will always stay in the background waiting for that keyword, wake up, to be able to start. But I found it to be very consistent for me and just really a huge benefit for our clients because we’ve always wanted the ability to be able to give them more control, more voice control over how to operate it, because they just haven’t been able to use traditional mice and keyboards before.

Brian Norton:
So something to really think about and consider that really, now, tablets are pretty accessible either by voice. Now you can also use keyboards. You can use mice. You can use joysticks. You can use really any Bluetooth device to be able to get access to it. It’s pretty phenomenal what they did with iOS 13. And now with 14, Belva, I would definitely love to hear what your thoughts are on how voice control is working with voiceover. Because I think that’s a huge thing for folks. I think over the years, we’ve done things with… I forget what the first one was called, but was it Jawbone back in the day? Not Jawbone.

Belva Smith:
No, I think it was Jawbone. [crosstalk 00:26:56]-

Brian Norton:
Was it Jawbone? Yeah.

Belva Smith:
Yeah, I think so.

Brian Norton:
And then other programs like that. It’s just, they’re expensive and this would be a great way to do all you need to do right on one device.

Belva Smith:
Yeah. I mean, doing the taps can be very challenging for lots of different individuals. So to be able to just say, for example, tap face time, everybody would like to be able to do that, right, because you don’t have to look for it on the screen. You don’t have to worry about, did you tap with the point of your finger or the palm of your finger. Especially for folks with longer nails…. And that was a big challenge for me when I first started using the iPhone is adapting to the fact that my fingernail is not what the phone wants or the tablet wants.

Belva Smith:
It wants the skin of my finger. So I always tell everybody to use the palm of their finger, not the tip of their finger because it doesn’t really like the tips. And this is a good place for me to follow up. Or I don’t know, it was Josh, you or Brian one had mentioned using the Bluetooth mouse with the tablets and iPhone.

Belva Smith:
I did, immediately after we had that conversation, jumped on Amazon and order the $10 Bluetooth mouse that I now have connected to both my iPad and my iPhone and it’s amazing. I mean, it was simple to get connected and again, for individuals that have difficulty tapping the screen, being able to use that mouse to move around to dial a number or whatever is just, it’s amazing. It works great with voiceover. I don’t know, but for this individual, who’s asking this question about the voice control, you might also consider trying to use a Bluetooth mouse.

Brian Norton:
Yeah, because they all work together, right?

Belva Smith:
Right.

Brian Norton:
So you can use gestures. You can use your Bluetooth devices, keyboards, mice, or voice control at this point. It’s pretty phenomenal with the access that people have been given. And I think it’s always helpful to mention as well, I think mice have been able to get connected to Android devices for even longer, right? I love where technology pushes other technology to get better. And that’s an area where that’s been missing from iOS devices and iPads for a long time and now they have it. And so that’s really, really great and cool.

Brian Norton:
But it’s good to see competing technologies, push each other in the right direction to make accessibility a part of kind of their ecosystem, if you will, as they build software and their operating systems. So I’d love to just open this up to our listeners. If you guys have any feedback on voice control, maybe it’s a personal experience that you have with that particular type of software. We’d love to hear from you guys. Our phone number is 317 721-7124 or you can give us a call on our listener line. That’s at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks.

Brian Norton:
All right. So our next question is what device, Android or iOS, would you say has more accessibility for persons with visual impairment?

Belva Smith:
Well, I’ll start out real quickly with that one. There was a time, I’m going to say definitely three years ago, that I would have quickly jumped to say iOS. However, I can’t do that so much anymore. I think the question is deeper than which one is more accessible. Because I believe that both Android and iOS are, in most cases, equally accessible. It really comes right down to what’s your support system?

Belva Smith:
So what are the folks around you using? Are most of the folks around you using an Android device? Is an Android device what you started out using? Or are most of the folks around you using an iOS device and is that what you started out using? Because the folks that I know that do use an… And wait, let’s clarify too. Because Android is still that huge variance group. When you say Android, there are so many different forms of Android.

Belva Smith:
But I’ve seen it folks that can use the Android OS just as equally, quickly and efficiently, as folks that are using iOS. Most of the apps that are available for iOS are also either available in the Google Play Store or whatever or there’s something comparable with the exception of the one app that’s available for iOS that is still not accessible in the Android and that is one of my favorite apps, one that I share with everybody, and that’s Seeing AI. But would I make a recommendation or make a decision based upon that one app? No, I wouldn’t.

Josh Anderson:
Hey Belva?

Belva Smith:
Yeah.

Josh Anderson:
Google has, and I forget the name of it because I always do, it’s Look Back or Lookout or Google Look. I don’t think it can do the handwriting, but it does everything else that Seeing AI does.

Belva Smith:
And can you do it with voice command? Because the Siri shortcut-

Josh Anderson:
I don’t know. That’s a good question. I have not tried… I don’t have half as much experience with the voice commands on Android, but I do know that Google… Again, it’s Look Back, Look up, Lookout.

Belva Smith:
I think it’s Look Back, but you’re right. But I think with the introduction of the Siri shortcuts being part of the Seeing AI, that just makes it even more valuable. So I don’t think you can honestly say one is more than the other. I think it’s really comes down to… thank goodness. Thank goodness that our visually impaired folks have the same opportunity to make a decision based upon the device itself that they like and not that they’re being forced to use this one device because it happens to be the only one that’s really accessible.

Belva Smith:
So the same way that I can choose whether I want an Android or a Apple device, they have that same opportunity now and I think it’s fair… or I think it’s important for us to mention, if our listeners haven’t already figured it out, we are very much based upon the iOS environment.

Belva Smith:
So our experience with the Android is very limited. I think there was a few of us that at one time were using Android, but have eventually made the crossover to iOS. And I’m not sure really why that is. I guess, just because, again, that’s what is around us, so I think that… I would not make a decision based upon which one’s more accessible. It would be based upon which one do I like the best and which one are my friends using and what do I have experience with?

Tracy Castillo:
Belva?

Belva Smith:
Yeah.

Tracy Castillo:
I want to say that, to me, it’s iOS. It’s the iPhone. I had the Android and I’ve worked on a Android for a long time and I stood by it. It was least expensive, everything in the app store was there, but then I started realizing with the iPhone, everything’s there. Earlier, we had the question about the dictation part on my notes on my phone and then we brought up Live Transcribes.

Tracy Castillo:
I went to the Google store. I have a phone, a Google phone, right here. I tried to get it. You have to download it. The Android’s great because you can make it what you want to make it, but the Apple just seems to have it all built there, in there. I mean, [crosstalk 00:35:15]-

Belva Smith:
Well, and to go along with what you’re saying there, Tracy, the Android is more customizable. The iPhone, you kind of get what you get. You don’t really have control like you do with the Android. So having that control, if having that control is of importance to you, then you would definitely want to go with the Android. It’s really, in my opinion, a personal preference.

Tracy Castillo:
It [inaudible 00:35:42] is. Yeah.

Brian Norton:
Yeah.

Belva Smith:
The Android used to be the choice because it was cheaper, but I’m not so sure that that’s the case anymore because now we’ve got the lower cost iPhone models. I believe you can buy an iPhone now for like 400 bucks. Right?

Tracy Castillo:
Well, you can probably get a contract one for even cheaper, like a lower end one for 50 bucks. I’ve seen those on stores.

Belva Smith:
Yeah. So I think that the price comparison is a lot closer than what it used to be.

Brian Norton:
Yeah. I’ll just throw in there, so going back to what you guys were talking… It’s Google Lookout is the app that kind of simulates what Seeing AI does. And I think it all depends on your upbringing, if you will, I was a Windows guy for so long. I never understood Mac. I just had a hard time with it. And finally I made the switch and it took me quite a while to get comfortable with it, but once I got comfortable with it, now, I feel pretty comfortable. And when I go back to Windows, I don’t understand it.

Brian Norton:
And I think that same thing lives in kind of the smartphone universe as well. You’re comfortable with what you’re comfortable with. And do you want to take a few months off to be able to learn a whole new thing, or you just want to continue using what you’re using, right? I think for folks, it just takes… You got to want to make the change if you’re going to make the change.

Brian Norton:
But I do agree with both of you guys. I think with the iPhone, it’s all built in. You don’t get a lot of customization. You get what you get. With the Android, man, you’ve got some options there, but you got to download them. They’re not right there. You got to go out and pick the things that you want, put them on your phone, get it the way you want it to do, but you’ve got a lot more flexibility in your system.

Brian Norton:
The other thing to think about longer term as well is just Android, when they update your firmware or your hardware on your device, oftentimes, I think times out pretty quick and so you have to go out and get it. There are less expensive, so you have to go out and buy a new device probably more often.

Brian Norton:
Same thing happens with iPhone, but I think you get maybe a little bit longer lifespan out of your iPhone because you can continue to update and whenever they update the operating system, you get new accessibility features. That’s what we just saw with iOS 14. Everybody’s excited about some of the new things like sound recognition and headphone accommodations and other kinds of things, but you just keep updating the operating system and getting new and better accessibility features that help include everybody with your particular product.

Brian Norton:
And so, I just think a lot of it goes back to what you’re used to if you’re more comfortable… And again, I think Belva, you’re exactly right with the, what’s your support around you look like? Is your kid using a Google phone? Maybe get a Google phone because they can help you. If you’re an older adult, is your child using, a grandkid using a certain type of smartphone? Maybe get the same one that they’re using, because what a great opportunity for you to work with them to be able to kind of learn more and spend time with your grandkid, right?

Brian Norton:
So think about those around you, because you’re going to want to have that support to be able to kind of help you get better at that stuff. All right. So I want to just want to open this up to our listeners. Love your feedback on that Android or iOS more accessibility for folks with visual impairments. If you want to give us a call, you can do that at 317 721-7124 or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Love to hear from you. Thanks.

Brian Norton:
All right. So our next question is what is your favorite new iOS 14 accessibility feature? Thoughts on that? What do you guys think?

Tracy Castillo:
I do. I have some. And I like the fact that they didn’t tell you exactly what they updated and every time I opened up an app, I’ve learned something new, like something else changed. So I’ve noticed that going on. My favorite one so far is the text message menu. You can pin your favorite conversations to the top, so you don’t have to scroll back and forth. So sometimes I can get a little… my eyes get a little tired from looking at the lines and anyhow, on the screen.

Tracy Castillo:
And if I can just see the picture at the top, I touch it and there is their text message. So that was my favorite one so far. Also the magnifier, it’s now an app on the phone. I will still go ahead and use the triple tap because I like the triple tap, but the fact the magnifier is in the phone now instead of just available through the assistive tech menu. I think that’s what it’s called, but those are my two favorites so far.

Brian Norton:
Excellent. Belva, what about you? Have you played with iOS 14 much?

Belva Smith:
No. No, I haven’t.

Tracy Castillo:
[crosstalk 00:40:27].

Belva Smith:
And that’s why I thought it was funny that, Tracy, you said every time you open up a new app, you see that there’s a change. I haven’t even noticed any changes.

Tracy Castillo:
Really? Okay. So-

Brian Norton:
Have you updated your phone? Yeah, not only my phone but my iPad too.

Tracy Castillo:
Okay.

Brian Norton:
Yeah, check it. So there’s two operating systems there, right? So there’s iOS, which is your phone operating system and now they’ve separated out the iPad operating system. So those are two different things and there’s different accessibility features in each.

Brian Norton:
And so I think you’ll find a lot more accessibility features in your phone these days, but if you just start scrolling around, if you swipe all the way to the right, you’re going to find something called an app library, which is new to the phone. Tracy, I love what you mentioned about the magnifier. I love that it’s an app right now.

Tracy Castillo:
Yeah, it’s an app.

Brian Norton:
And that you can hide the controls. It used to not be able to hide the controls for the magnifier. And in addition to that, you can also now take snapshots and then zoom in and out on snapshots as well. I just love the new features of being able to hide the controls and be able to take multiple shots, single shots so that you can then zoom in and zoom out on those individual pictures that you’ve taken.

Tracy Castillo:
Is that [crosstalk 00:41:49]?

Belva Smith:
I’m sorry, Tracy. My iMac also updated. And I mean, I don’t really notice anything different with it either. I mean, I had a little bit of trouble getting it to work with my banking website in the beginning, but they got that worked out. So I don’t know. I’m missing something, I guess.

Josh Anderson:
Hey guys, [inaudible 00:42:14] some reason left the meeting. What all did you guys talk about? What haven’t you talked… or what-

Belva Smith:
We talked about you, Josh.

Josh Anderson:
… [inaudible 00:42:18] did you talk about? That’s fine. I know that. I mean, I know that, but what else would you talk about? But I mean, [inaudible 00:42:25] accessibility features. I heard the magnifier. I heard the messages-

Tracy Castillo:
I said the app and the magnifier.

Josh Anderson:
Okay. Cool.

Tracy Castillo:
And the magnifier and then also the text messages.

Belva Smith:
Okay, so-

Josh Anderson:
I really like the back tap.

Tracy Castillo:
[inaudible 00:42:36].

Brian Norton:
Here, let Josh go. Go ahead, Josh.

Josh Anderson:
I was just saying, I really liked back tap. I think that’s awesome that I can just tap the back of my phone and it goes home or I can tap it three times and it does something else. I think that’s great. As long as you have an iPhone 8 or newer, I think, it’ll do all those. I think that’s great. Some of the new voiceover accommodations are really cool. The way it’ll use the built-in AI to try to guess what’s in pictures or tell you if there’s texts in pictures and things. I think that’s pretty darn neat.

Josh Anderson:
And also it’s if you’re on a website that’s not accessible, it will guess. It will tell you it’s a button, even if they didn’t program it correctly. So I think some of those are really great.

Brian Norton:
Yeah. And there’s a lot built for folks who are hard of hearing. So it’s got sound recognition built into it. So now if it hears a dog barking or a kid crying or a fire alarm or other kinds of things that are in your environment, It’ll send a notification to you letting you know that it’s heard something and telling you what it thinks it heard so that you can be more aware of what’s happening in your environment.

Brian Norton:
And then really the other part is headphone accommodations for folks who are hard of hearing. And so being able to use either Beats headphones or the new Apple AirPods, essentially, as your own personal listening device, where you can then adjust the frequencies for high, mid, or low frequencies to be able to best or better accommodate what you’re hearing so that you can hear it the best you can.

Brian Norton:
So check out those. Those are both under accessibility under the hearing section within iOS. One is under audio visual and then the other one is under sound recognition is just the menu option directly under the hearing section. So those are both really, really great. If you haven’t had the opportunity to download iOS 14, take that opportunity if your phone is compatible with it. There are a lot of great options. Josh, the back tap thing you mentioned is awesome.

Brian Norton:
It just gives people with disabilities another way to be able to access their accessibility features or really access tons of different iPhone controls, functionality, directly from either double tapping or triple tapping the back of your phone, just gives us another option for access if we want to be able to use something with somebody.

Josh Anderson:
The only problem I have with it is I’m real fidgety, so I tap the side of my phone a lot when I’m nervous and it counts.

Brian Norton:
Yeah.

Tracy Castillo:
I have question for you, Josh. Does that back tap work when you have a case on your phone?

Josh Anderson:
Yes. I mean, I have a case. I have the smaller OtterBox on mine and it still works.

Belva Smith:
It’s a huge upgrade too. It’s kinda like the last Windows 10 upgrade. I think it’s like 2 point something megabytes, so it’s a pretty big-

Brian Norton:
Gigabytes. Yeah.

Belva Smith:
Yeah.

Brian Norton:
Yeah. It’s a big one. It takes a little bit of time to get in there, but it really changes the… I’m surprised Belva you haven’t noticed it if you have updated.

Belva Smith:
Well, Brian, I just got to tell you, I haven’t updated my phone.

Brian Norton:
Okay.

Tracy Castillo:
I knew it.

Brian Norton:
Okay, because you will notice it looks different.

Tracy Castillo:
There’s too much to not notice.

Belva Smith:
Yeah, because I immediately went to look and see because it’s 14.01, right?

Brian Norton:
Correct. Yeah.

Belva Smith:
Okay. I don’t have 14. It’s telling me I need to do that one. But my iMac is definitely updated and my iPad is updated, but I haven’t really used my iPad much, so.

Brian Norton:
Yeah, some of the newer features are only on the iOS device [inaudible 00:46:09] your iPhone. And you’ll instantly notice there’s a completely new look for how things are being able to… You’re able to customize your home screen. It’s got a whole thing called an app library, so you can find apps more easily. It’ll alphabetize them and put them into categories for you. It’s been a really cool update to be able to play with and customize the wazoo out of your phone. So I really enjoyed it.

Brian Norton:
So I’ll just open this up to our listeners. I would love to hear from you. What is your favorite iOS 14 accessibility feature is? So if you’re an iPhone user and have any feedback on that, we’d love to hear from you. Give us a call on our listener line. That’s 317 721-7124 or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. Love to hear from you. Thanks.

Male:
And now it’s time for the wild card question.

Brian Norton:
All right. So our next question is the wildcard question. And this is where Belva has a question for us that we haven’t had time to prepare for. So Belva, what do you got for us today?

Belva Smith:
Well, so this is kind of related to the whole pandemic that we’re still in. I’m almost feeling like a lot of people are feeling like we’re not really in the middle of a pandemic anymore while we are, but I keep hearing on the news a lot of conversation about how restaurants and other businesses are really suffering because people aren’t going into the office anymore, so they’re not going out to lunch and they’re not stopping for their coffee and they’re not dropping in these other businesses.

Belva Smith:
And I was just thinking, because we’ve had a couple of chilly mornings, hence chili. We used to have our chili cook off about this time of year. And I was in the office today to pick up some paperwork and stuff and I noticed on our floor, literally one person. And as I left there, I thought that I know that a lot of businesses have discovered they don’t need all these offices and they don’t need all these people coming into the office. Do you think it’s going to stay that way or do you think eventually we will find ourselves back in an office somewhere?

Brian Norton:
That’s a great question, Belva. I think to some degree, I think it remains the same. I don’t think you can make this drastic of a change and head back anytime soon. I mean maybe down the road, way down the road, but I think it would take something, again, to make that change. What I think I love most about this is we’ve all gotten the opportunity be adults.

Brian Norton:
And you go home and you can work from home, but do your job, right. So we’re expecting folks to be adults, get their job done, do what they’re supposed to be doing. It does make things a little harder, but I think companies are seeing… We pay a lot of money for space and for the building. Maybe we don’t need all that. And what do we really need? And start to rethink the space that we have. Now, I will say, in and amongst our team, that’s created, I would say just a… not animosity, but just there are different roles, right?

Brian Norton:
Some positions lend themselves to being able to work outside the building, right? So we have folks like you guys in clinical that are road warriors. You guys are on the road all the time, going to places. You don’t need a whole lot of space other than for a place to be able to hang your hat when you come in the office and a place to put equipment that’s coming in for your clients. We got to be able to store that and keep it safe and make sure it’s under lock and key.

Brian Norton:
We have other folks on our staff who need to be there. I think of Steve on our staff who helps kind of with all the comings and goings of the library equipment. Well, he’s got to be there with the library equipment.

Belva Smith:
He was the only person there when I was there [inaudible 00:50:06] day.

Brian Norton:
Right. Right.

Tracy Castillo:
Steve is the building warrior.

Belva Smith:
Yeah.

Brian Norton:
That’s right. That’s right. So I think there’s some differences there. I don’t think we go back to the way it was, honestly. I think there’ll always be some sort of a hybrid. And quite frankly, I’ve enjoyed the flexibility of being able to kind of wake up and walk 50 feet to my desk and get to work in the morning. I think it saved a lot of time and helped with some productivity things. But I think we’ll find ourselves coming to the middle a little bit more.

Brian Norton:
I think right now it’s pretty drastic. You said you saw one person in the building. I think we might see that shift to the middle a little bit more.

Belva Smith:
On our floor, not in the building, but on our floor.

Brian Norton:
Right, right.

Belva Smith:
I think companies and agencies are, as you pointed out, Brian, are discovering that there’s a large expense in keeping those offices open. And when people can be as productive, sometimes more productive, without the offices, what’s the point?

Brian Norton:
Right. I mean, we’re at a fairly large organization and there’s certain programs that their services need to happen in our building, right? I think of adult day, I think of customized living skills, I think of autism, behavioral supports and other kinds of things, diagnostic evaluations. Those things happen in our building and they happen there for a reason and I don’t think they’re necessarily… You can’t just take those into the community outside of our building to be able to do them in people’s homes.

Brian Norton:
And so I think those things will always stay, but I think for a lot of folks, depending on what your job and what your role is, I think we see folks shifting that way where, we’re kind of making it when this thing work. It’s been six months. Has it always been easy? No. Have we had some hiccups and hurdles to get over? Yes. But I think we’re making it work and we’re finding ways to kind of live in this kind of new norm.

Josh Anderson:
Yeah. I completely agree. I think you might see it hybrid a little bit, but I don’t think you’ll ever see everyone go back to working in the office kind of thing or I can do wrong and one day when this is all over, everybody just goes back to normal and doesn’t know any different. But kind of like we said with prices, with costs, with everything else, I think people are going to see that a lot of stuff can be done from home and that might just be the way that it stays.

Belva Smith:
I hear in our area, especially real estate for homes has shot way up in the last few months, primarily because people are working from home and realizing they don’t necessarily have enough home space for everybody to be at home. Because I mean, you’ve got people working and going to school and all that stuff.

Belva Smith:
And when you were all going outside of the home to do those activities, it didn’t really matter how much space you had at home. But now that everybody’s trying to do it from home, kind of feeling like, well, we need a bigger house. [crosstalk 00:53:10].

Tracy Castillo:
But I will also say, on those days that happen, that everybody seems to show up at the building at the same time, morale goes up. When you get around your coworkers and see them, your morale goes up. I agree with Brian, this is going to shift a little bit and people are going to start realizing, hey, I need to spend more time at the office. I can do this and that there that I can’t do at home.

Brian Norton:
One thing I do appreciate about going back into the office as it is so quiet. I get a lot done. I get to focus a little bit more. I’m not worried about my dog barking at somebody walking in front of the house or all the other dogs that people got over COVID. I feel like I live in a zoo around here with all the new dogs in the neighborhood.

Brian Norton:
And so it’s just a lot quieter and I can focus a lot better when I do go into work. So I’m actually going back into the work probably two or three times a week now, probably more so like three times. But again, I think that flexibility stays.

Brian Norton:
Well, hey, I just want to thank you guys for the show. Great question, Belva with the wild card. Before we wrap it up today, just want to give you guys an opportunity to say goodbye to everybody. And I’ll start with Belva. Belva?

Belva Smith:
Hey, see you guys later.

Brian Norton:
Excellent. And Tracy?

Tracy Castillo:
Thanks for having me. I think it was a great show.

Brian Norton:
Excellent. Josh?

Josh Anderson:
See you next time, everybody.

Brian Norton:
Excellent. I just want to reiterate, we love to hear from you, getting your questions and feedback really add a lot to our show. So give us a call. You can call us on our listener line. That’s 317 721-7124 or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or send us a tweet with the hashtag ATFAQ. Be a part of our show. Without you, we don’t have a show, so love to hear from you. Take care.

Brian Norton:
And it seems like every week we have at least one blooper, so here you go.

Tracy Castillo:
Can you hear me now?

Brian Norton:
Yeah.

Josh Anderson:
Yeah.

Tracy Castillo:
Can you hear me now?

Brian Norton:
Yeah.

Josh Anderson:
Yeah.

Belva Smith:
Bye-bye.

Brian Norton:
Thank you.

Josh Anderson:
Are we done? Sweet. We’re done? All right.

Brian Norton:
Good catch, Belva. Belva, what about you? Have you played with iOS 14 much?

Belva Smith:
No, no I haven’t.

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 and produced by Brian Norton, gets editorial help by Josh Anderson and Belva Smith and receives support from Easterseals Crossroads and the INDATA Project. ATFAQ is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. Find more of our shows at www accessibilitychannel.com.

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